

^STORIES^OF^THE- 
OLD^BAY-SIMEi 





I BROOKS fi 

1^ f!:' 




mm 
mm- 



stories of 
The Old bay State 



BY / 
ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 




NEVv^ YORK .:• CINCINNATI •:■ CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

1899 



2(>?16 



Copyright, 1899, by 
AMERICAN BOOK COiMPANY. 



BROOKS S BAY STA. 
\V. P. I 



TWO COPIES REcniVEO. 




WVo 



^\ 



^^cr ,^^ 



PREFACE. 

The Old Bay State has built itself into the very bone 
and sinew of the republic. Interests throughout our 
land are too often local, and loyalty is too apt to be 
merely civic pride ; but the story of Massachusetts, as 
it is known to all Americans, is dear to all, for it is, to 
a certain extent, the story of America. 

Pilgrim and Puritan, rebel and " revolutioner," pio- 
neer and patriot, dissenter and democrat, reformer and 
repubhcan, — these names and the ideas they represent, 
the crop of Massachusetts planting and of Massachusetts 
reaping, were borne, in seed or pollen, north, west, and 
south upon the searching, health-laden breezes that 
blow straight inland from the broad and glorious Bay. 
The names and deeds of Standish and Winthrop and 
Vane, of Otis and all the Adamses, of Hancock and 
Revere, of Daniel Webster and Horace Mann, of Andrew 
and Everett and Sumner, belong not to Massachusetts 
alone, but to that great republic of which they were 
forerunners, founders, or loyal and devoted sons. 

It is to foster this broad national spirit rather than 
simply to gratify State pride that these stories of the 

5 



Old Bay State have been written. With full acknowl- 
edgment of the errors which far too many Americans 
place to the discredit of Massachusetts alone, remem- 
bering the chain of intolerance, persecution, fanaticism, 
" isms," theories, reforms, and ideas that links the past 
and the present, the writer still feels that even these 
shortcomings did indeed bring health and vigor to the 
land, and were not of Massachusetts alone, but are the 
heritage of all America from the days when our fathers 
were slowly laying, through error as well as justice, the 
firm foundations of the republic. 

These stories of the Old Bay State have been pre- 
pared as a contribution toward this record of founda- 
tion laying. Although each is complete in itself, the 
reader will readily discover the vein of connection or 
association running through the series, and can from 
the several stories make the complete story, — a sort of 
Bay State e pliiribus umim, as it were : out of many, 
one! 

By them may the children of the Old Bay State, and 
of those greater States to whose growth, upbuilding, 
and defense the commonwealth of Massachusetts gave 
so freely of its blood, brains, and vigor, be knit anew 
to love for the dear old commonwealth and for that 
nobler republic in which all the American common- 
wealths have equal part and equal pride. 

Elbridge S. Brooks. 



CONTENTS. 



How Captain John Smith went a-Voyaging 
How the People called "Pilgrims" made a Pilgrimage 
How they Signed an Agreement on Shipboard . 
How Captain Mi;.es Standish met the Indians . 
How Governor Winthrop Played the Part of Moses 
How William Pynchon Blazed the Bay Path 



How Mrs. Sherman's Pig almost Upset the Government 
How Governor John Winthrop *' Sinned against the 

Light " . . . , 

How AN Angel of the Lord Fought for the People of 

Hadley 

How Sir Edmund Andros Faced to the Right-about 
How THE Men of Massachusetts Helped . . 
How James Otis became a "Flame of Fire" 
How the Old Bay Colony led the Van 
How Massachusetts Burst her Bonds . , . . 
How A Marblehead Fisherman made Himself Useful 
How Dorothy Hancock kept Open House . 
How Caetain Shays Missed His Mark . , . . 
How they made Sam AdAxMS a Federalist . 

7 



69 

74 

82 
92 

lOI 

109 
118 
127 
136 
145 
157 
166 



PAGE 

How Massachusetts Launched the New "Mayflower" . 174 
How the Codfish came to the Statehouse . . . 183 

How the "Farmer of Marshfield " Saved the Union . 192 
How the "Old Man Eloquent" Won the Fight . . 200 
How THE Young Knight of Freedom led the Crusade . 207 
How THE High vSheriff's Prophecy came True . . . 217 
How Governor John Andrew took Things in Hand . . 224 
How the Bay State read the Golden Rule Anew . . 233 
How the Children Honored the Poet .... 241 

How THE Man with Eighty Thousand Children brought 

them up . . 250 

How they bored through a Mountain in Berkshire . 258 
How One Man set the World a-Talking .... 270 
How the Proclamation Ends 277 



STORIES OF THE OLD BAY STATE. 



3>#<C 



HOW CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH WENT 
A-VOYAGING. 



M 



ANY years ago there lived in the Httle town of 
Willoughby, among the chalk hills of Lincolnshire 
in England, a small boy named John Smith. But, 
though born with a very common name, he lived to be 
a most uncommon man. In fact, 
people are not yet through talking 
about him, and believing or disbe- 
lieving the stories he told. 

His home village of Willoughby 
looked out upon the restless gray 
waters of the cold North Sea. 
South of him was Boston, north 
of him was Waltham, west of him 
was Lincoln, while Newton and 
Walpole and Lynn were not far 
away, — all of them good Massa- 
chusetts names to-day, you see. Indeed, so far as town 
names are concerned, a New England man would feel 
very much at home in some parts of old England. 

9 




Captain John Smith. 



lO 

John Smith's boy friends were fisher lads or sailors' 
sons ; his neighbors and acquaintances were seafaring 
men. All the stories of the sea which he heard again 
and again awoke in him early that desire for adventure, 
and for a sight of foreign shores, which sent so many 
English boys, three hundred years ago, sailing away 
from their homes in search of fortune oversea. 

So, at fifteen, young John Smith left his home among 
the marshy fens and white chalk cliffs of Lincolnshire, 
and sailed away to seek his fortune. Like that other 
adventurer in the old song, *' he sailed east, he sailed 
west," and after a dozen years of wonderful and most sur- 
prising adventures, — enough, one would think, to satisfy 
the most restless of roving young Englishmen in the 
days of good Queen Bess, — John Smith determined to 
try his fortune in the new land across the western ocean, 
to which for over a hundred years the ambitious, adven- 
turous youth of England and Spain, of Holland and 
France, had been sailing in search of the wonderful 
treasures of the yet unexplored America. 

One portion of that wild American land had been 
called Virginia, in honor of England's virgin queen, 
Elizabeth. Thither Smith sailed in a fleet sent out by 
a syndicate of English business men, called the London 
Company for Virginia. 

It was in the month of December, 1606, that Captain 
John Smith- — for he was captain by that time — sailed 
westward to Virginia. 

There he had many strange and startling adventures 
— enouoh to fill a book. Some of them, such as the 
story of Pocahontas, the chieftain's daughter, and how 



II 

she saved the gallant captain's life, you know very 
well, though whether that exciting story is really true, 
partly true, or just made up by this always brave but 
somewhat boastful ''gentleman adventurer," is not yet 
absolutely decided. 

But after several years' residence in that new colony, 
during which he became its head man, or the " president 
of Virginia," and where, so historians now tell us, John 
Smith helped to found the first republic in America, he 
returned to England and interested four London mer- 
chants in a new venture. This was, as he believed, a 
good money-making scheme, just suited to his restless 
and inquiring mind. The four merchants took him in 
as partner, and, in the month of March, 1614, he set 
sail with two ships upon a trading trip to those parts of 
America far to the north of Virginia, to which he gave 
the name of New England, — "that part of America," so 
he described it in his book, " betwixt the degrees of 41 
and 45," — and New England it has been ever since. 

Other Englishmen had been there before him. One 
Captain Gosnold, in the year 1602, coasted the shore 
from Casco Bay to Cape Neddick, and from Boon Island 
to Cape Cod; the next year, 1603, stout Captain Pring, 
hunting for sassafras, with which he wished to freight 
his ship, *' bore into .that great gulf " which we call 
Massachusetts Bay, and, dropping anchor in Plymouth 
harbor, spent six summer weeks in gathering sassafras, 
testing the soil with various kinds of seeds, and having 
a good time generally with the friendly Indians of 
Duxbury Bay. 

But neither of these Englishmen, nor Champlain, the 



12 

Frenchman, nor the Dutch explorers who sailed into 
Plymouth harbor in 1613, staid long, or went about the 
study of their surroundings in a practical way. 

It was Captain John Smith who gave to the English 
people their first real knowledge of the land which he 
called New England, and which he explored thoroughly, 
coasting in an open boat from the rocky shores of the 
Penobscot to the sand hills of Cape Cod. 

He was the first visitor to appreciate Boston, for he 
called the place " the Paradise of those parts." He was 
the first man to recognize the vastness of the land 
along which he was sailing — " dominions which stretch 
themselves into the main, God knows how many thou- 
sand miles," he wrote, " and of which no one can guess 
the extent and products." He was the first one to 
declare, also, that New England was not an island, but 
a part of that great mainland which, so he believed, 
stretched away westward to India. 

Indeed, he was so dehghted with his explorations 
and adventures during those summer months of 16 14 
that when he returned to England he interested a 
trading syndicate of Plymouth, in southwestern England, 
in his scheme, and in 161 5 again sailed west, with the 
backing of this Plymouth Company, to plant a colony 
in New England. 

But he was taken prisoner by French pirates, and 
while he cruised about with them as a captive, he spent 
his time in writing a book which he called "A Descrip- 
tion of New England;" for Captain John Smith was 
never one to waste time. 

At last he got back again to England, and in 16 16 



13 



published his book, and a map to accompany it. Then 

he went about the country peddhng them, and trying 

to interest capitaHsts in his great 

scheme cf colonization. Twice 

formed a new company, twice ma 

ready to sail, and twice, by faili 

of plans, had to give up his 

scheme, so that the only thing 

he got out of it was the hig 

sounding title given him 

his backers, the "Admiral 

New England." 

But his work was by 
no means fruitless ; his 
book made people ac- 
quainted with the new 
land, for in it he told 
the men of old England 
what a grand country 
New England was. It had, he said, great fisheries 
which alone would support a colony, and bring more 
profit to England than gold-seeking; it had a fur busi- 
ness that was full of marvelous possibilities ; it had a 
soil wonderfully fruitful, and a climate just suited to 
Englishmen. In fact, he drew so attractive a pic- 
ture that soon English men and women who were 
restless or unhappy in their old home began to think 
that they might make a new one and a pleasant one in 
this New England beyond the seas, where, so John 
Smith assured them, they could ** recreate themselves 
before their own doors and in their own boats upon the 




sea, where man, woman, and child, with a small hook 
and line, by angling, may take divers sort of excellent 
fish at their pleasures," — for Englishmen were always 
great fishermen, you know. 

"And what sport," asked the delighted captain, 
*' doth yield more pleasing content, and less hurt or 
change, than angling with a hook and crossing the sweet 
air from isle to isle, over the silent streams and a calm 
sea, wherein the most curious may find pleasure, profit, 
and content? " 

But as he knew that mere pleasure might attract but 
would not draw people across three thousand miles of 
sea to settle in a new colony, of which he hoped to be 
the head, he showed also in his book how the colonists, 
and the syndicate that must back up the enterprise, 
could make much money out of his scheme. " For," he 
said, '* I am not so simple as to think that ever any 
other motive than wealth will ever erect there a com- 
monwealth, or draw company from their ease and 
humors at home, to stay in New England to effect any 
purpose." 

But there were other motives to cause some men 
and women to leave " their ease and humors " in Eng- 
land and seek a new home beyond the broad Atlan- 
tic. These people had heard of Captain John Smith's 
report; some of them had read his book. In time they 
were led to make test of his glowing accounts, and, in 
the New England which he had praised as a Paradise, 
to erect upon the shores of what was to be known as 
Massachusetts a commonwealth which was to be the 
beginning of a mighty state and a yet mightier nation. 



HOW THE PEOPLE CALLED "PILGRIMS" 
MADE A PILGRIMAGE. 



IN the days when Captain John Smith was having 
most wonderful adventures with pirates and Indians, 
there Hved in the pleasant village of Austerfield, in 
central England, a very bright boy of sixteen, whose 
name was William Bradford. 

At the same time a certain conceited, obstinate, 
narrow-minded Scotchman, named James Stuart, was 
King of England. He was the son 
of that famous Mary, Queen of Scots, 
whose pitiful story all the world 
knows. 

James Stuart, who was King James 
VI. of Scotland, was also King James 
I. of England, succeeding his cousin, 
Queen Elizabeth. But James Stuart 
had none of the good sense of Eliz- 
abeth Tudor. He had an absurd 
belief that he was the only man in 
the world able or fit to be King of 
England, and that, therefore, what- 
ever he did was right. 

But he did many things that were 
wrong, and one of these was to try 

15 




James Stuart. 



i6 

to make all the English people believe just as he did (or 
say they did), and go to his church. This is a very hard 
thing to do, as King James soon found out. 

As I have told you, he was obstinate as well as con- 
ceited. So, when he discovered that there were a 
number of people who would not do as he commanded 
in regard to their religion and church-going, he was 
very angry. 

These independent people were called " Puritans," be- 
cause they demanded that the English Church should 
be purified; for they believed that certain of its forms 
and beliefs were superstitious and misleading. 

Some of them, indeed, seeing no hope of reform in 
the church under King James, felt compelled to sepa- 
rate themselves from the English Church. For this 
reason they were called " Separatists." Their deter- 
mination made King James more angry than ever, and 
one day he said in a rage to some of the leading Sepa- 
ratists : *' In my kingdom I will have one doctrine, one 
discipline, one religion, and I will make you conform or 
I will harry you out of this land, or worse." 

And that is just what King James finally did : he 
** harried " out of England some of the best and bravest 
and noblest Englishmen. 

Just south of the town of Austerfield, in which the 
boy William Bradford lived, there was a little village 
called Scrooby. It was on the road between London 
and Liverpool, and was in the pleasant county of Not- 
tinghamshire, the English county next west of Lin- 
colnshire, where Captain John Smith lived' as a boy. 

The postmaster of the little village of Scrooby was 



named William Brewster. He was one of those who 
objected to King James's command. So he, too, had 
become a Separatist or '* Nonconformist," as the sect 
was sometimes called, because its members would not 
** conform," or agree, to King James's tyrannical orders. 

William Brewster was so good a Separatist that when 
those in the neighborhood of Scrooby and Austerfield 
wished a meeting place, he gave up to them his big 
house, and there they held Sunday services. 

Young William Bradford went to these Separatist 
services as regularly as he could. His family did not 
like to have him do this, and tried to stop him. But 
he believed he w^as right, and he would not be stopped. 
He would not stop even when King James sent men to 
break up the meetings and punish the leaders. 

Indeed, the earnest people who went to the Sunday 
services in William Brewster's house at Scrooby had so 
hard a time, and were made so very uncomfortable, 
that at last William Brewster and his friends determined 
to give up living in England, and go across .to Holland, 
where they knew they would be allowed to worship 
God as they chose; for the people of Holland had 
always been what we call ''tolerant." 

So, in the year 1608, a number of these Separatists 
went across the North Sea to Holland, leaving their 
beloved EngHsh homes "for conscience' sake," and 
young William Bradford left his home at Austerfield 
and went with them. 

He grew to be an active and earnest member of the 
English community that had settled in the old Dutch 
city of Leyden in Holland. But as he grew to man- 
BROOKs'? 1; \v -;ta.-2 



i8 

hood he began to feel, as did some of the older men 
and women of the congregation, that they had made a 
mistake in settling in Holland. 

To be sure, they had freedom to worship God in their 
own simple way, but they found that instead of remain- 
ing Englishmen they were gradually becoming Dutch- 
men. Their daughters grew up and married Dutchmen ; 
their sons grew up and became Dutch soldiers or sailors 
or merchants. If they staid many years in Holland, 
Bradford and Brewster and the other thoughtful ones 
said, they would cease to be Englishmen ; and next to 
being good Christians, they desired most to be good 
and loyal Englishmen. 

So, after living twelve years in Leyden, Bradford and 
Brewster and the others determined to leave Holland 
and sail across the sea to that great and promising 
America they had all heard about, there to settle as an 
English colony under- English laws. 

You see, therefore, that these people did not come 
to America simply for " freedom to worship God," 
as Mrs. Hemans's poem tells us. They had perfect 
freedom in this way in friendly Holland. No one there 
disturbed them or interfered with their religion. They 
came to America to make a home for themselves and 
their children, where English should be spoken and 
England should be served and loved. But one of the 
things they were determined upon for the new colony 
was that it should be under the control of those of 
their own religion and their own faith. 

After a great deal of trouble, they succeeded in get- 
ting King James's consent to settle in English territory. 



19 

The king said they would be out of England anyway, 
and that was what he most desired, for thus he would 
be rid of them. 

But they were uncertain just where to settle. At 
first they thought of going to South America or the 
West Indies. But they soon gave up that idea. Those 
hot countries, though rich and fruitful, were unhealthful 
for Englishmen, and the hostile Spaniards who had set- 
tled in that section of America made it still further 
objectionable to Englishmen. Then they thought of 
trying Virginia; but the Church of England people 
were in control there, and the Separatists could hope 
for no liberty of worship, according to their desires, 
in a section which the established church controlled. 

They had heard from Captain John Smith many 
pleasant and agreeable things about New England; 
but they had also heard that it was a cold, bleak coun- 
try during part of the year, and almost as hard for 
Englishmen to stand as the Spaniards' country in the 
south. 

But John Smith had told them, too, about the Hudson 
River and the pleasant country thereabouts. More- 
over, this was included in the section which some ex- 
plorers referred to as the northern parts of Virginia, but 
which John Smith had called New England. The Sepa- 
ratists liked that name. It was not New Holland — it was 
New England. 

The arrangements were made, and the day came at 
last. On the 22d of July, 1619, they left the queer 
Dutch houses in Leyden which had been their homes 
so long, and turned their faces toward America, feeling, 






■X IhViB'i^K. 



^.;f ^.^/^iW.; .n^Mr^^S ^4^^--^^^^« 



(20> 



21 

as young William Bradford said in the account he wrote 
o^ their adventures, that " they were pilgrims, who 
looked not on the pleasant things about them, but 
lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, 
and so quieted their spirits." 

And that is where this division of the Separatists got 
the name by which we know them best — the Pilgrims. 
It comes from William Bradford's diary, a fragment of 
which is reproduced on the opposite page. 

For, years after, that bright boy of Austerfield rewrote 
his journal into a book, or narrative, which was really a 
history of the Pilgrims and their settlement 'in Massa- 
chusetts. The original written copy of that book was 
lost for many years, but it was found a few years ago, 
and was generously given up to the State of Massa- 
chusetts by those who had it in England, for it was 
considered something very precious. 

• And now the '' Bradford manuscript," as it is called, 
is kept in an honored place in the library of the State- 
house in Boston, the capital of that very commonwealth 
of Massachusetts which John Smith first praised to 
Englishmen, and which William Bradford and his com- 
panions came across the sea on an uncertain pilgrimage 
to settle and upbuild. 



HOW THEY SIGNED AN AGREEMENT 
ON SHIPBOARD. 



WHEN at last the Pilgrims really got under way 
for America, it was in one small, poorly built 
ship, which strained and cracked so badly in a fierce 
mid-ocean storm that it would surely have gone to the 
bottom if one of the passengers had not happened to 

have with him a big 
Dutch screw which 
he had brought from 
Holland, and with 
which he screwed 
together the pieces 
of the broken main 
beam. This rickety 
little ship was 
called the May- 
flozver. 

_^_ ._-_ ^~ Xhe Pilgrims had 

spent two good 
months in getting started. It was not their fault, how- 
ever. They had met with nothing but disappointments 
and delays from the very day they left Leyden. 

They had sailed across to England in a good-for-noth- 
ing craft called the Spcechvell, which did not speed at all 
well. When they reached Southampton they found that 




23 

their friends in England had arranged with one of the 
trading syndicates — the London Company — to assist the 
enterprise, and send over more colonists with them in 
another ship, the Mayflozver. 

So the two little vessels sailed out of Southampton ; 
but the good-for-nothing Speedzvell sprang a leak, and 
the}^ had to stop for repairs, only to break down again. 
At Plymouth, in southwestern England, the Speedwell 
finally had to be abandoned. Here, too, a number of 
the passengers, disgusted or frightened over the unlucky 
start, gave up going, and those who were determined to 
go on joined into one company, and all went aboard the 
Mayflozver, which finally, on the i6th of September, 
1620, sailed out of Plymouth harbor, bound across the 
sea. The real voyage had begun at last. 

It was a long, rough autumn voyage of nearly two 
months. The company on the Mayflozver, made up of 
those who did not back out and would not lose heart, 
amounted to one hundred and two persons, — men, 
women, and children. Although the Mayflozver was 
very nearly wrecked in mid- ocean, at last, on the 9th of 
November, the wanderers sighted land. It was the long, 
low, flat, forest-fringed, sandy shores of the outer or 
ocean side of Cape Cod, well up toward the " fist." 

But no safe landing could be made on that shoal- 
lined, dangerous beach. The captain did not dare to 
risk a longer voyage to Virginia, so, after being almost 
cast away on Pollack Rip, they rounded Cape Cod, — 
so named years before by Captain Gosnold, because 
of the vast numbers of codfish he found there, — 
and on the iith of November they came to anchor in 



24 

what is now the harbor of Provincetown. And here, 
Hke the God-fearing folk they were, they fell upon their 
knees, so William Bradford tells us, and " blessed the 
God of heaven who had brought them over the vast 
and furious ocean, and delivered them from all its perils 
and miseries." I suppose you might call that iith of 
November really the first Thanksgiving Day in Massa- 
chusetts. 

Long before the Mayflozver reached Cape Cod, how- 
ever, Bradford and Brewster and the other real Pilgrims 
discovered that a number of their fellow-passengers were 
not Pilgrims at all, but were men put on board as a 
speculation by the English syndicate, which had hired 
them to go, or had given them free passage, with the 
idea of making something out of them or their labor 
when they at last got to work in America. 

But when it was decided not to go to Virginia, but to 
another part of the New World, these "servants" of 
the London Company declared that their contract was 
broken, and that when they landed they were free to 
do as they pleased. They even planned a mutiny. 

It was clearly the duty of the Pilgrims to protect 
themselves from these irresponsible associates ; so Brad- 
ford and Brewster and the responsible leaders talked 
things over, and for their own safety determined to 
make an agreement to hold together and act together, 
whatever happened. 

They did this by drawing up a paper, or " compact," 
which they signed, and by signing promised to live up 
to. That compact on the Mayflower really established 
what is called a civil government. It was government 



25 

by the act of the people, and is said to have been the 
first paper or document of that sort ever made and 
signed by the people, uniting together for self-protection 
and self-government. 

It was the first step toward the later Declaration of 
Independence which made the United States of America ; 
and it should be remembered that this compact was a 
Massachusetts production, drawn up and signed in Mas- 
sachusetts waters, in that landlocked harbor of Province- 
town, on the iith of November, 1620. 

And this was what was written and signed that day 
in the cabin of the Mayflower by forty-one of the one 
hundred and two Pilgrims — the best and wisest, the 
bravest, most reliable and most determined men of that 
little company, headed by Bradford and Brewster and 
Miles Standish and John Alden, and others of famous 
name and glorious memory : 

*' In the name of God, Amen. 

" We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal sub- 
jects of our dread sovereign lord King James, by the 
grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland king, 
Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the 
glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, 
and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant 
the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by 
these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence 
of God and of one another, covenant and combine our- 
selves together into a civil body politic, for our better 
ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends 
aforesaid ; and, by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and 
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, consti- 



26 

tutions and offices, from time to timx, as shall be thought 
most meet and convenient for the general good of the 
colony, unto which we promise all due submission and 
obedience. 

*' In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed 
our names, at Cape Cod, the i ith of November, in the 
reign of our sovereign lord King James, of England, 
France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the 
fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620." 

After that paper had been thus signed, the men who 
thus "covenanted andcombined " had an election, and 
voted to make one of their best men, John Carver, gov- 
ernor of the colony for the first year. And there you 
have, in Massachusetts, the first really American act in 
our history, — signing a constitution and electing a gov- 
ernor, both by act of the people. 

This was on Saturday. That very day a scouting 
party of sixteen armed men landed to get firewood and 
to explore. But on Sunday '' they all rested," — because 
it was the Sabbath day, — a good Massachusetts custom, 
again. The next day being Monday, they established 
still another unchangeable Massachusetts custom : the 
Mayflower women had their first wash day. 

This was the real landing of the Pilgrims! The 
women went on shore at Provincetown with the accu- 
mulated " wash " of their respective families, and had a 
grand " Monday wash." 

This, as one student of history declares, was a nota- 
ble event, and quite as worthy to be celebrated as the 
storied landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. 
For, he says, that first wash day at Provincetown, on 



■27 




the 13th of November, 1620, was really the beginning 
of English domestic life in America, — the introduction 
of family life into a new land and a new home. 

For this coming of the Pilgrims was no expedition of 
adventure, no search for unknown cities, *' rich in bar- 
baric pearls and gold," no restless hunt for vast riches. 
It was a real " home hunt " — the beginning of a colony. 
The majority of that company were women and children. 
If men alone had come in the Mayflozver, they probably 
would have gone off somewhere else or turned home- 
ward when they did not find the genial climate and 
delightful country that Captain John Smith had reported, 
but, instead, a sandy waste swept by chill winds from the 
north. Having women and children in their party to 
protect and care for, they could not turn back. They 
simply Jiad to stay. 



2^ 

So Bradford and Miles Standish and others of the men 
— sixteen in all — spent two days exploring the '* fist " of 
Cape Cod; and when they decided that it was not the 
best place for a settlement, or even for winter quarters, 
they left the Mayfloiver in Provincetown harbor, and, 
with a strong party of thirty-four men, pulled across the 
bay in an open boat, called a shallop. The captain of 
the Mayflozver had charge of this expedition by water, 
which landed at last in the very harbor which Captain 
John Smith had visited and called Plymouth, — the 
Indians had called it " Accomac," — and this the pros- 
pectors decided was the best place for a settlement. 

A month the Mayflozver lay in Provincetown harbor ; 
then, acting on the report of this search expedition, the 
little vessel pulled up anchor, hoisted sail, and tacked 
across the bay to Plymouth. But while Bradford was 
away with the searching company, his young wife was 
drowned in Provincetown harbor. So it was a sorry 
home making for him. 

When the Mayflozver dropped anchor in Plymouth 
harbor, a working party went ashore to put up a big 
house for the colonists to live in. It was called the 
** Common House," and was near the water. Then, as 
fast as they could be cared for, a boat load at a time (one 
family or more) was rowed ashore from the Mayflozver, 
and set up housekeeping in the Common House. 

This was the landing at Plymouth — not all at once, 
or on the same day, but as soon as each family could be 
accommodated. 

Some of them perhaps landed on Plymouth Rock. 
It was about the only rock on the beach ; in fact, it was 



29 

about the only rock anywhere on that sandy stretch that 
Massachusetts people call the south shore. Scientific 
people say that the rock itself was a " pilgrim," brought 
down to the Plymouth beach by some glacier drift or 
iceberg in the far distant days called the ice age. 

It was not a very big rock, and it was probably cov- 
ered with water at high tide, but still, a boat load now 
and then may have landed at Plymouth Rock. 




Mary Chilton is said to have been the first woman to 
step ashore, and John Alden, a young man of whom you 
have all heard, is said to have helped Mary Chilton to 
step out on the rock. It was like him to lend her a help- 
ing hand, for John Alden was a very courteous and gen- 
tlemanly young man, so we w^ll hope the story is true. 



HOW CAPTAIN MILES STANDISH MET 
THE INDIANS. 



IN one of the boats that ferried across shoal water from 
the Mayfloiver to the rock came Captain Miles Stan- 
dish, with his wife Rose and their household belongings. 
Captain Miles Standish was a " character " ! He was 
about forty years old. He was short, sturdy, and stout, 

as quick of temper as he was of 
eye ; in fact, the Indians called 
him the " little pot that soon 
boils over." But they also 
called him the " strong sword," 
which shows how much they 
feared and respected his valor. 
He was courageous, ener- 
getic, and determined, a man of 
sound ideas, of good common 
sense, and ripe military knowl- 
edge based on real experience. 
He was gentle of heart, sparing 
of words, strong of purpose, and 
of excellent judgment. It was a great good fortune that 
gave to the first Massachusetts colony so valiant a de- 
fender, so faithful a comrade, and so excellent a soldier 
as Captain Miles Standish. 

30 




Miles Standish. 



31 

Though one of the Puritan Pilgrims, he was no Puritan. 
He came of the old Roman Catholic family of Standish 
of Duxbury Hall, in the English county of Yorkshire. 
Defrauded of his rights and his inheritance when a 
young man, he went across the sea to Holland, and 
there enlisted, like other EngHsh soldiers, in a Dutch 
regiment. He made friends in the Separatist colony at 
Leyden, became interested in their plans, and, being of 
a restless and adventurous disposition, joined himself to 
the company of Pilgrims, and embarked with them on 
their uncertain voyage to the New World. 

He was a fine soldier, and was looked upon by his 
companions as the one best fitted as a leader in all affairs 
of danger or of- defense. He had signed the compact 
for mutual protection in the cabin of the Mayflozver; he 
led the first exploring party at Cape Cod ; and had headed 
the landsmen who made that bolder voyage across the 
bay to Plymouth. Even before the landing of the Pil- 
grims at the rock, he had seen and scattered at Eastham, 
on "the cape," certain of the scarce and unreliable Indians 
who had spied upon, threatened, and, on one occasion, 
really attacked the newcomers on the Massachusetts 
shores ; in memory of which this place for years retained 
the name the Pilgrims gave it — the " First Encounter." 

These Indians were members of one or another of 
the twenty tribes of red Americans who then inhabited 
the present State of Massachusetts. But their numbers 
were small, and it was because of this that the Pilgrims 
of Plymouth were able to occupy and hold without mo- 
lestation the fertile fields that lay about the place of 
landing and settlement. 



32 

Once upon a time that section had been fairly well 
peopled with Indians. But a few years before the 
coming of ^ the Pilgrims a fatal epidemic had swept 
across southeastern Massachusetts, and but few Indians 
had been spared. Those who lived had joined other 
tribes, leaving their corn fields and hunting grounds 
uncared for and unoccupied. 

Of these the Pilgrims took possession, and after they 
had built the half-dozen log huts of their little settle- 
ment upon a street (now known as Leyden Street) start- 
ing from the rock and running up to the hill, Captain 
Miles Standish had raised on this hill a strong platform, 
upon which he mounted a few cannon, to protect the 
little settlement below. They passed their first terri- 
ble winter there on Leyden Street. It was really not a 
terrible one, as New England winters go, but it was 
fatal to those English people unused to the climate, the 
changes, and the quick consumption and deadly pneu- 
monia they led to. Then as soon as spring fairly 
opened, the little remnant of fifty-two seasoned ones 
set about planting and farming the Indian plantation. 

In this farm work they were greatly helped by an 
Indian with a story. His name was Squantum. He 
had belonged to the tribe that owned and occupied the 
site of Plymouth ; but a few years before he had been kid- 
naped by a roving party of English sailors, taken to 
Spain in captivity, rescued by a philanthropic English- 
man, taken to London, where he had lived as a servant, 
and finally had drifted back to his old home and hunt- 
ing ground at Plymouth. 

But while he had been abroad the fearful epidemic 



33 



had killed or scattered all his tribe ; so Squantum became 
a wanderer, and at last joined himself to the warlike 
tribe of the Wampanoags, who lived in what is now the 
region of Taunton, New Bedford, and Bristol. 

Squantum was brought to Plymouth and introduced to 
the Pilgrims by a wandering Indian named Samoset. He 
became very friendly because they were Englishmen, — 
countrymen of the good Englishman who had rescued him 
from slavery, rather than of the wicked 
Englishmen who had kidnaped him. 

Squantum proved a great help to these 
inexperienced Englishmen who wished to 
become American farmers and fishermen. 

He told them all about the Indians in 
that country, helped them to make 
friends, and afterwards to arrange a treaty 
with Massasoit, the chief of the warlike 
Wampanoags. He sold them the land 
which they had ** squatted upon " at 
Plymouth, and which they looked upon 
as belonging to Squantum as the last 
living male heir of his lost tribe. 

He told them what to plant and how 
to plant it; he explained to them all about Indian corn, 
which was a new cereal to the English Pilgrims, but which 
often became the mainstay and salvation of the colony. 

In fact, Squantum proved of so much value to the 
Pilgrims as friend, guide, farming expert, interpreter, 
go-between, and companion that one recent historian 
declares that Americans owe a great debt to the In- 
dian Squantum, and that he better deserves from Mas- 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — 3 




34 



sachusetts a memorial and a monument than does Leif, 
the fabled Norseman, whose statue stands in Boston's 
stately Back Bay, or any of the early heroes of colonial 

America ; for 
an acquaintance 
with Indian corn 
and the knowl- 
edge of how to 
live in America, 
both of them 
broughtaboutby 
this very friendly 
and "traveled" 
Indian, made the 
colony of Plym- 
outh not only 
possible, but per- 
manent. 

It was Squan- 
tum who brought into friendly relations with the white 
men the big chief of all the Indians thereabouts, — Mas- 
sasoit the Wampanoag, — and we can picture to ourselves 
Captain Miles Standish and his six musketeers following 
Squantum along the town brook to the point where Mas- 
sasoit and his dusky bodyguard waited to be received. 
A salute was fired, and after that the " guest of the col- 
ony " went back with Standish and Squantum to the 
town, where, in a house especially fitted up for his recep- 
tion with cushions and a green carpet, the governor met 
the chieftain and concluded that treaty of peace and 
friendship of which I have spoken. This treaty was 




«»4i&^ 



35 

faithfully kept, both by the red men and by the white, 
for more than fifty years. It was finally broken by bad 
white men who were newcomers in the colony, and thus 
brought about a bloody war. But the real Pilgrims and 
the honorable Wampanoags kept it loyally, and in this 
the Pilgrims of Massachusetts set an example which Wil- 
liam Penn followed to such excellent advantage w-hen he 
attempted the peaceful founding of Pennsylvania. 

Probably the "moral influence" of Captain Miles 
Standish and his "thunder-making" muskets counted 
for considerable with Massasoit, for these were present 
at the making of the treaty. The Indians, indeed, had 
a wholesome fear of the " little captain of Plymouth " 
and his slim guard of matchlock men. 

Later, when the bad boy of the colony, young Jack 
Billington, broke the rules and wandered off, only to fall 
among the Indians, Squantum and Captain Standish 
found him and brought him back. 

After that, when Squantum was captured by certain 
rebellious braves of Massasoit's tribe who objected to 
friendship with the white men, and proposed to kill 
Squantum, ^the "mouth of the Englishmen," as they 
called him, — Captain Miles Standish led his picked 
soldiers against the rebels, and forced them to give up 
Squantum and obey Massasoit. 

When an Indian conspiracy aimed at the destruction 
of the w^hite men's settlements, — w^hich began to extend 
along the coast after Plymouth had proved itself a suc- 
cess, — Captain Miles Standish straightway led his little 
army of a dozen men against the hostiles, who were not 
of Massasoit's tribe, seized the ringleader of the con- 



36 

spiracy, killed two Indians who attempted to interfere, 
and by his stern and determined manner so surprised and 
overawed the conspiring savages that they quickly fled, 
leaving their leader a prisoner in the "little captain's" 
hands, and never again attempted to interfere with 
those whom the ** strong sword " protected. 

So, with firmness, decision, fairness, and friendship, 
with a show of force when necessary, and with real fight- 
ing if pushed to it, but always with justice and for the 
ends of peace and security, Captain Miles Standish met 
the Indians of Massachusetts, and always came off con- 
queror. 

It was because of his courage and firm front, quite as 
much as because of the honor of the Pilgrims in treaty 
keeping, that the Indians of that section were for so 
many years peaceful and friendly. It was because of 
the valorous captain of Plymouth, the trusted defender of 
the colony in its days of weakness, its honored represen- 
tative in England in the days of its firm establishment, 
that the English colonists along the south shore of 
Massachusetts were enabled to gain and keep a footing 
in the section which their pluck, their faith, and their 
persistence first colonized and afterwards developed. 

But, in spite of his courage and firm front, Captain 
Miles Standish, if we may believe the legends, had not 
the pluck to plead his own cause when he wanted a wife. 

I have told you that there came to Plymouth with 
Captain Standish his wife Rose. But she did not live 
through that first dreadful winter, when the harsh 
Massachusetts east wind laid so many of the unseasoned 
Pilgrims low. 



37 

The colony, to succeed, must be a colony of homes ; and 
In such an association it was, as the Bible assured the Pil- 
grims, ''not well for man to live alone." So Captain 
Miles Standish decided to take another wife, and his 
choice fell upon Priscilla Mullens, daughter of one 
William Mullens, who with his wife and two children 
came over in the Mayflozver. 

But Captain Standish's wife Rose had only been dead 
about three months, and the captain, either for this 
reason or from some other cause, did not feel like him- 
self asking Mr. Mullens for his daughter ; so he prevailed 
upon his young friend John Alden, the cooper, who had 
joined the Pilgrims at Southampton, to interview Mr. 
Mullens. 

The interview with Priscilla's father was entirely satis- 
factory. Mr. Mullens was perfectly willing to have the 
main reliance of the little band of colonists as his son- 
in-law. But the Puritan maiden had no desire to marry 
the fiery little captain, especially when she greatly pre- 
ferred the handsome young cooper, and was certain that 
he was proflfering the captain's request, not from choice, 
but from duty, and because the captain had asked him, 
as a friend, to be his deputy. So when her father said 
yes to the captain's suit, Priscilla looked at John Alden 
and asked that famous question, ** Why don't you speak 
for yourself, John ? " 

Evidently John did speak for himself, for the records 
tell us that in the spring of 162 1, after that deadly first 
winter had left Priscilla Mullens an orphan, she married 
John Alden, — the second wedding in the colony. 

Evidently, too, the captain bore no hard feelings 



38 



toward his friend because Priscilla Mullens became 
Mrs. Alden rather than Mrs. Standish, for we read that 
the fifth wedding in the colony was that of Captain 
Miles Standish and "a lady named Barbara," said to 
have been a sister of his wife Rose. We read, too, 




i^tim fvm\iu/iu )i 'ill i.iiiKi ti I 



Standish House, Duxbury. 



that John Alden and his wife built a house near to that 
of Captain Standish and his wife, and that in after years 
John Alden's daughter married Captain Standish's son. 
That is the true story of John Alden and Priscilla, and 
of Miles Standish's courtship, concerning which Massa- 
chusetts's most famous poet wrote an equally famous 
poem. Though it may be wrong as to details and dates, 
the poem is what makes these three persons of the Pil- 
grim days historic. For, more than dates and dry facts, 
Longfellow's delightful romance gives to the age it cele- 



39 

brates in verse an atmosphere of gentleness, kindliness, 
purity, and peace that glorifies those days of hardship 
which suggested it, that ennobles the lovers, and makes 
the doughty little captain of Plymouth an honored and 
heroic figure. 

Honored and heroic he certainly was, — the colony's 
strong arm, its defense and sword ; and the tall shaft on 
Captain's Hill in Duxbury, which commemorates his 
valor and recites his praise, is not more a landmark than 
is Captain Miles Standish himself to us who, to-day, read 
of that age of effort, privation, and persistence. 

Governor Carver died from an April sunstroke, and 
WiUiam Bradford, the runaway Austerfield boy, was 
elected by his fellow-colonists, in " town meeting as- 
sembled, " Carver's successor as governor of Plymouth. 

The colony grew slowly, — but it grew\ Colonists came 
over the sea to begin a new life in the Plymouth planta- 
tion ; a new charter was obtained that gave them per- 
mission from the king to live in Massachusetts instead 
of Virginia ; in twenty years the colony was free from 
debt; new settlements were started as offshoots along 
the shore ; and for all its grow^th and strength no two 
men deserve more credit, or should be held in higher 
esteem by Americans, than Governor William Bradford, 
of beautiful character, and Captain Miles Standish, the 
Christian soldier. 



HOW GOVERNOR WINTHROP PLAYED 
THE PART OF MOSES. 

IT was on a beautiful September day in 162 1, the 
loveliest season of the year in forest-clad New Eng- 
land, that Captain Miles Standish, with Squantum, his 
Indian friend, and a picked force of a dozen stalwart 
matchlock men, sailed into Boston harbor, bound on an 
expedition to what we call the Blue Hills of Milton, but 
which the Indians called Massachusetts, — the " great 
hills of the arrowheads." 

They coasted along the island-dotted harbor from 
Quincy to Charlestown, and landing at the mouth of the 
Mystic, just opposite the foot of Copps Hill, left their 
shallop on the shore, and marched inland along the 
Mystic as far as the heights of Medford. 

They sought the Indian chieftain of that region, — a 
famous woman known as the squaw sachem of the 
Massachusetts, hoping to make with her a treaty of 
peace and friendship. But the squaw sachem, whose 
chief settlement was in what is now the city of Somer- 
ville, either did not know or did not care to know of the 
visit of the white men, for she was always "just gone 
beyond," so her tribesmen reported, and Captain 
Standish returned to Plymouth without having met the 
woman chief ; but he had made a fairly satisfactory 

40 



41 

exploration of Boston harbor and Its vicinity, and re- 
ported, on his return, that *' the country of the Massa- 
chusetts is the paradise of all these parts ; for here are 
many isles all planted with corn, groves, mulberry trees, 
and savage gardens." 

Thus, too, had Captain John Smith reported of the 
fair and pleasant land at the mouths of the Mystic and 
the Charles. 

As he had told Captain Henry Hudson about the 
river that bears the name of that fearless sailorman 
who led the way to the greatness of New York, even so 
had he told an English clergyman, the Rev. William 
Blackstone (or Blaxton) of the benefits of Boston as a 
place of residence, and had prompted that exclusive and 
somewhat pecuHar parson to live a hermit's life just over 
the crest of Beacon Hill, — the first white inhabitant of 
Boston. 

The stories of Smith and the reports from Blackstone 
had stirred in England much desire among the great 
trading syndicates to colonize or work up this attrac- 
tive region, and at last a company was formed in Eng- 
land, under rich and powerful backing, to bring into the 
market the Massachusetts Bay country, as the stretch of 
water about Boston harbor was called. 

In the summer of 1628 a company of twelve influential 
and worthy gentlemen met together at the famous college 
town of Cambridge in England, and formed themselves 
into an association, which they called the '' Governor 
and Companions of the Massachusetts Bay Company." 
They were all leading men of the growing Puritan party 
in England, which, just then, was worrying into action 



42 



that obstinate son of an obstinate father, Charles Stuart, 
the son and successor of James, and then styled Charles 
I., King of England. 

By some means these Puritan gentlemen secured from 
King Charles a charter to possess and govern the lands 
stretching north and west from Boston harbor, then 
known as Massachusetts Bay. 

Having secured this charter, the new company, meet- 
ing at Cambridge, elected as the president or governor 
of the company John Winthrop of Groton in Suffolk. 

John Winthrop was one of the noblest of men and of 
Englishmen, — sturdy, honorable, pure-spirited, strong- 
hearted, a leader and a guide. 
Men, indeed, have called him the 
" Washington of colonization." 
Could any term better describe his 
character? "When his life shall 
have been adequately written," 
says John Fiske, " he will be rec- 
ognized as one of the very noblest 
figures in American history." 

There was a great feeling of un- 
rest in England. That mighty 
struggle between king and com- 
mons, known as the " Great Rebellion," was fast draw- 
ing near. The Puritans, worried and persecuted by the 
king and his advisers, looked for relief and rest toward 
a land where they might have the right to believe and 
act and live according to the dictates of their own con- 
sciences rather than the king's tyrannical laws. 

That land was for them on the shores of Massachu- 




John Winthrop. 



43 

setts Bay, and to that fair country John Winthrop, as 
head of the newly formed company, offered to lead all 
such dissatisfied Puritans as desired to make for them- 
selves a new home in a new land. 

Already other men, following the example of the Pil- 
grims of Plymouth, had gone across the sea for the same 
purpose. Settlements had sprung up along the Bay shore, 
north and south. The Dorchester Fishing Compan}^ had 
planted little villages at Salem and on Cape Ann, and 
even before John Winthrop led the great exodus of 
1630, and became the Moses of the Puritan people to 
lead them into what they deemed the Promised Land, 
other adventurous spirits or enterprising settlers to the 
number of several hundred had established homes, scat- 
tering themselves along the curving shore of the great 
bay from Plymouth and Duxbury to Salem and the 
Piscataqua. 

And this is a part of the agreement entered into by 
John Winthrop and the rest of the twelve gentlemen 
who met at Cambridge in England on the twenty-eighth 
day of August, in the year 1629: 

*' For the better encouragement of ourselves and 
others that shall join with us in this action, and to the 
end that every man may without scruple dispose of his 
estate and affairs as may best fit his preparation for this 
voyage, it is fully and faithfully agreed amongst us, and 
every one of us doth hereby freely and sincerel}^ promise 
and bind himself, on the word of a Christian, and in the 
presence of God, who is the searcher of all hearts, that 
we will be ready in our persons and with such of our 
several families as are to go with us, and such provision 



44 

as we are able conveniently to furnish ourselves withal, 
to embark for the said plantation by the 1st of March 
next, at such port or ports of this land as shall be 
agreed upon by the company, to the end to pass the 
seas (under God's protection) to inhabit and continue in 
New England." 

March came. Winthrop was ready ; a dozen ships 
were preparing for the voyage ; a thousand emigrants 
were booked for the venture ; and on the 22d of March, 
1630, the advance fleet of four vessels — one of them the 
flagship of the governor — set sail from Southampton. 

As did William Bradford of the Plymouth colony, so 
did John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay colony, — 
he kept a diary; and out of that diary has been taken 
the story of the founding and early settlement of the 
commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

Governor Winthrop's ship was the Arbella. It was 
named for one of the leading Englishwomen who had 
cast in their lot with the colony, — the Lady Arbella John- 
son. She was the wife of one of the head men of the 
company, and was the daughter of an English nobleman. 

The expedition first made land off Salem harbor, 
anchoring just beyond Bakers Island, still one of the 
Salem landmarks. Then, while Governor Winthrop and 
some of his chief associates went up to visit the weak 
and struggling Httle settlement, most of the passengers 
went ashore to '' stretch their legs " after their long and 
tedious voyage of seventy-six days, and to pick straw- 
berries ; for it was the twenty-second day of June, just 
the time when the wild strawberries of Cape Ann are 
ripe and most inviting. 



45 

From Salem the Afbella sailed down the coast to Bos- 
ton harbor. There the emigrants landed and began the 
settlement of the real Massachusetts at Charlestown, or 
" Cherton," as the clipped English pronunciation called 
it, where the Mystic and the Charles pour their mingled 
waters into the broad and beautiful harbor. 

But the scarcity of drinking water at Charlestown 
bothered them, and when they learned from Blackstone 
of Beacon Hill that there were excellent and numerous 
springs on the hill-broken peninsula across the Charles, 
the colony removed to the other side of the river, and 
began a new settlement around one spring of especial 
excellence, on the site of what is now the Boston post 
office. To this settlement they soon gave the name of 
Boston, the cathedral town in the fen country of Lin- 
colnshire in England, near to the boyhood home of Cap- 
tain John Smith. The English Boston, too, had been 
the home of the Lady Arbella Johnson, and there lived 
also a noted Puritan minister, the Rev. John Cotton, 
who later joined the growing colony at the new Boston 
in Massachusetts. 

For, in spite of a harsh Boston winter, full of rawness 
and east wind, of cold and storm and snow, the colony 
did grow and prosper, far outstripping the Plymouth 
settlement. 

" We are here in a paradise," — so Governor Winthrop 
wrote to his wife, who had not yet sailed over the sea 
from England. '' Though we have not beef and mutton, 
yet (God be praised) we want them not. Our Indian 
corn answers for all ; yet here is fowl and fish in great 
plenty." 



46 

But though Captain John Smith and Captain Miles 
Standish and Governor John Winthrop, too, had all 
called Boston a " paradise," and though that opinion 
has ever since been held by all true Bostonians, it 
proved anything but a paradise at first. 

The winter, as I have said, was a bitter one. It was 
much worse than that fatal first winter of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth. The newcomers, weakened by the long voy- 
age in poorly appointed and scurvy-tainted ships, were 
not prepared for such extremes of cold as they experi- 
enced ; they were poorly provided to stand the trying- 
climate of New England, which can never be depended 
upon, except, as Mark Twain declares, to give you all 
possible changes within twenty-four hours. 

Clams and mussels, groundnuts and acorns, are not 
a strengthening diet. Many died before spring, among 
them the Lady Arbella and her husband, Isaac Johnson, 
one of Governor Winthrop's right-hand men. 

•Food grew so scarce, their limited supplies giving out, 
that one day in February, 1631, the governor had put 
the last batch of bread into his oven ; he had scraped the 
last handful of meal in his barrel to give to a starving- 
comrade, and had appointed a day of humiliation, fast- 
ing, and prayer. It was likely to be a fast day indeed, 
when suddenly a sail was seen ; a ship came up the har- 
bor. Despair turned to joy. It was the long-expected, 
long-delayed supply ship bringing stores from England. 

They kept no fast day then, for, so Winthrop tells us 
in his diary, "We held a day of thanksgiving for this 
ship's arrival, by order of the governor and council, 
directed to all the plantations." 



47 




? \! 



^ 



That was in February, 1631. It was the first regu- 
larly appointed Thanksgiving Day in New England. 

** The plantations," as the governor called the cluster 
of settlements, or townships, were some eight or more, 
— Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, Saugus, Salem, New- 
town, Charlestown, and Dorchester. 

In almost every case these townships had not been 
settled by people from different sections of old England, 
but by those who, following the lead of the ministers of 
certain congregations at home, had come to America as 
offshoots from different Puritan churches in England, or 
as the followers of some particular minister. Naturally 
such emigrants would club together and select a place 
for settlement where they could gather around their own 
favorite preacher or set up their own congregation of 
church comrades. 



48 

From this sprang the townships of Massachusetts, for 
the grants of land obtained from the Massachusetts Bay 
Company were not made to any one man, but to the 
congregation or company to which he belonged. 

So the towns grew up; for when other places were 
settled in the colony, such settlements were made by 
those who went out from one of the older towns in the 
same manner as they had first emigrated from England, 
— in companies or congregations. Thus the men of 
Dorchester and Cambridge and Watertown went out to 
found the towns along the Connecticut, even, as in the 
next chapter, we shall see a company from Roxbury 
going forth to the settlement of Springfield. 

Such companies were really partners in land develop- 
ment. Each man had a voice in what was to be done, 
and when, once a year, in the spring, the men of each 
settlement met together in the church or the townhouse 
to arrange for the carrying on of the affairs of the settle- 
ment during the year, every voter had his say. This 
was called " town meeting," and to this day the gov- 
ernment of Massachusetts townships is by the voice of 
all the voters assembled in town meeting. 

But as the towns of Massachusetts Bay grew in num- 
ber they needed to talk over and arrange for more than 
their own village affairs. They wished to have some- 
thing to say about the union of the whole colony. 
The ** Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in 
New England " meant a governor and several assistants, 
elected each year by the freemen of the company. But 
as the colony grew, and the " freemen " became scattered 
and separated^ this voting in a whole assembly was not 



49 

easily arranged. So it was agreed to select two freemen 
from each township and send them to sit as delegates in 
the Great and General Court, as the council of the 
colony was called, to talk about taxes, and say what the 
people wished as to the conduct of the government. 

This was the earliest representative body in New 
England ; it was the beginning of the Massachusetts 
legislature. It was really only the general court of the 
Massachusetts Bay Company brought from England to 
America, and called together at Boston, the capital of 
the colony. But gradually this court or body of coun- 
cilors and lawmakers outgrew the stockholders in the 
company, and developed into democratic self-govern- 
ment in Massachusetts, — government by the people for 
the people, the same that later grew into the American 
republic. 

For, in the great Statehouse oi> Beacon HiU in Bos- 
ton, beneath the famous effigies of the gilded codfish, 
placed aloft in the Senate Chamber and in the House 
of Representatives as the sign of the source from which 
sprang the wealth and prosperity of the old Bay State, 
there meets still, to talk about taxes and government, 
that same Great and General Court, representing .the 
freemen of the commonwealth to the founding of which 
noble John Winthrop led his brave company of Puritan 
settlers in those far distant summer days of 1630. 

This change in method of which I have spoken, which 
brought about the establishment of the Massachusetts 
legislature, and gave the right of representation to all the 
freemen of the Massachusetts Bay colony, was largely 
due to the bold and independent stand of the men of 

BROOKS's BAY STA.— 4 



50 

Watertown, — in 1630 the farthest outlying town of the 
colony. 

Watertown adjoins Cambridge. One rides out to it 
now by carriage or trolley, over the broad avenue that 
skirts the white memorials of Mount Auburn, and leads 
into the center of the old town where modern houses 
and old-time history continually jostle each other. Most 
glorious in its ancient history is this bold stand of the 
freemen of Watertown in the summer of 1631. For 
when, in August of that year, the officers of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company learned that there was danger of 
French invasion, at once, without asking permission of 
the colonists, they proceeded to levy a war tax of sixty 
pounds upon each settlement, to provide for the general 
defense. 

Then it was that the freemen of Watertown objected. 
" It is the law," they said, " that no Englishman shall be 
taxed without his consent. We are Englishmen. We 
have been allowed no voice or vote in this matter. We 
will not pay the tax." 

Thereupon the officials of the company, in high 
dudgeon, summoned the men of Watertown to Boston 
and solemnly "admonished " them; but still they pro- 
tested that there should be no taxation without repre- 
sentation. The necessity of the tax was explained ; 
but so just and wise seemed the protest of the Water- 
town men, and so determined, too, that, although the 
Watertown men, out of regard for the public safety, 
did pay their tax, the very next year a change was 
made in the constitution of the colony, by which all 
freemen were to have a voice in the affairs of the col- 



51 

ony, and the General Court voted that the whole body 
of freemen should elect the governor and his assist- 
ants. From this grew the town representation and the 
legislature of Massachusetts. Thus the determined 
stand of the men of VVatertown against privileged classes 
and aristocratic government early worked a reform in 
Massachusetts politics. Out of it came, as John Fiske 
says, " the beginnings of American constitutional his- 
tory ;" and the protest of the men of Watertowm in 163 i 
grew at last into that protest of the w^hole American 
people — *' No taxation without representation " — which 
made up the Declaration of Independence, carried for- 
ward the War of the American Revolution, and created 
the republic of the United States of America. 

The story of Mas.sachusetts had begun. John Smith 
and the Pilgrim Fathers had been but the preface to the 
story. The men of Watertown were the prophets of the 
republic. 



HOW WILLIAM PYNCHON BLAZED THE 
BAY PATH. 

ABOUT the time that WiUiam Bradford was a small 
/\boy at his English home in Austerfield, while John 
Winthrop was a small boy at his EngHsh home in Gro- 
ton, there was another small boy in a big manor house 
in the pleasant hamlet of Springfield in the county of 
Essex, forty miles or so from London. His name was 
William Pynchon, and he was destined to play a part 
with those other boys, when they had all grown to man- 
hood, in the making of Massachusetts. 

William Pynchon's family were people of consequence 
in that section of England. The boy was well educated, 
for the times ; he was sent to college at Cambridge, and 
later became an enterprising business man who liked to 
interest himself in great enterprises. 

Such an enterprise, he believed, was to be found in 
the colonization scheme of the Massachusetts Bay Com- 
pany, and as he was one of those who stood out sturdily 
against the selfishness of obstinate* King Charles, he 
joined himself to the Puritan party, although he himself 
was a warden of the established church of England. 

He became interested in Governor Winthrop's enter- 
prise, and. came across the sea with that excellent man 
in one of the four ships that led the exodus to Massa- 

52 



53 

chusetts Bay. He was one of the men to whom the king 
granted the charter for colonization and governing; and 
when the Massachusetts Bay people were settled in 
their new home in and about Boston, William Pynchon 
built his house in Roxbury, and, because of his integrity 
and business ability, was made treasurer of the colony. 

But the men of the Massachusetts Bay colony were 
not all such great-hearted men as John Winthrop. Some 
of them were hard and stern, like Dudley, who succeeded 
Winthrop as governor, or bigoted but brave, like Endi- 
cott, who cut the cross from the flag of England, be- 
cause he considered it a "symbol of idolatry." These 
men, and others like them, wished to have things in their 
church so peculiarly their own way that they made it 
very uncomfortable for those who disagreed with them. 

William Pynchon differed from them, both as to 
method and manner. Things did not exactly suit him, 
and as he looked off toward the forest-fringed Milton 
hills, or toward the distant Wachusett ridges, he thought 
of the freer life in the west, beyond those hilly barriers, 
and longed to try it, if others would join with him. 

In his trade with the Indians for beaver skins and 
furs, he had learned of the fair and fertile lands that lay 
along the broad Connecticut River, and he felt that 
opportunities for successful business and for more agree- 
able home life were to be found in those wide green 
valleys through which the great river ran southward to 
Long Island Sound. 

So one day in the year 1635 he set out with two 
Indian traders on a sort of prospecting tour, and was so 
well pleased with what he saw in the Connecticut valley 



54 

that when he returned to Boston he prevailed upon the 
company to grant him leave to lead a new colony into 
the western lands. 

By that time the Bay colony had grown considerably. 
New people kept coming across the sea to join it, and an 
increasing number of settlements dotted the curving 
shore of the big bay, or ran just a few miles inland. 

William Pynchon's scheme was considered a most 
daring one, for nobody knew just what were the risks 
and dangers of the ** far west " along the unknown 
Connecticut. The company did not like the idea of 
weakening their own holdings by new ventures, but 
they finally gave William Pynchon " permission to with- 
draw ;" and in the spring of 1636 he set out, with his own 
family and other Roxbury people, to follow the Indian 
trail, and blaze a path through the wilderness to the 
desired lands along the Connecticut River. • 

The trail led southwesterly, through where are now 
the towns of Framingham and Hopkinton and Grafton, 
to Woodstock, across the Connecticut line ; then, turn- 
ing, it ran northwesterly to where to-day Springfield sits 
upon the banks of the fast-flowing Connecticut. 

Governor Winthrop had just launched and fitted from 
the stocks on his big "Ten Hill Farm," in the present 
city of Somerville, on the Mystic, the first ship ever 
built in New England. He called it the Blessing of the 
Bay, and the Blessing's earliest voyage was to sail with 
the household goods of William Pynchon's colonists 
around Cape Cod into Long Island Sound, and up the 
Connecticut to the settling point at the mouth of the 
Agawam. 



55 

But the colonists themselves went by the Bay Path, — 
that Indian trail through the Massachusetts forests 
which William Pynchon blazed out for them and for 




>afe-5^esl 



civilization. It was a bold and hazardous thing to do. 
The way was long ; it was beset with dangers and perils, 
the unknown ones seeming the worst of all. 

But William Pynchon was a brave-hearted man. Day 
by day he led the way along the winding path from the 



56 

bay, with that sturdy determination that marks the Eng- 
Hshman, and that unfaltering faith in God's direction 
that inspired the Puritan. 

Day by day that Uttle band of a dozen famihes fol- 
lowed their wise, strong, hopeful leader. The old 
people or the invalids rode in the horse litter; the rest 
went on foot or on horseback. Their droves of swine 
and cattle were driven on before them. And so, with 
confidence in their leader and hope in the future, they 
pushed their way through the wilderness in the change- 
ful days of a New^ England May, seeking their new 
home. 

We catch a glimpse of those pioneers of Massachu- 
setts civilization as we read their story. Preceded by 
an armed outpost, who cleared the path and kept a 
watchful eye for the dreaded beasts of the forest and 
still more dreaded Indians, they were a picturesque 
cavalcade in sober Puritan tints, — the green-jerkined 
guides and fighting men, the primly dressed, hooded 
women, the demure but wondering children, and the 
tall, grave figure of the indomitable leader in his long 
great boots, allowed only to those worth a thousand 
dollars or over. 

He cared for his people well. Escaping all dangers, 
meeting the Indians in friendly fashion, without loss of 
life or property by attack or raid, the pioneers followed 
the Woodstock trail, and then, turning, struck through 
the forest to the northwest, and on the 14th of May, 
1636, reached their destination after eighteen days of 
travel. There they found shelter in the big log hut which 
had been built to receive them on the " house meadow," 



57 

near the mouth of the Agawam, just below the present 
city of Springfield. 

Home-building soon began. A church was estab- 
lished, planting grounds and house lots were appor- 
tioned, lands were bought from the Indian owners, and 
the home life of the settlement began. 

William Pynchon was a wise director. He was judge 
in disputes, adviser in worry or trouble, officiating min- 
ister until one could be secured and settled, farmer, 
builder, boatman, hunter, magistrate, and business man, 
— for he kept in view his main purpose, to carry on a 
far-reaching and profitable trade with the Indians. 

His dealings with these "sons of the forest" were 
just and wise. He was faithful to his promises, a true 
friend and good neighbor, and the safety of the settle- 
ment was largely due to his honorable and upright 
conduct toward the red owners of the soil. 

Other families soon joined his settlement at the mouth 
of the Agawam. To the little hamlet was at last given 
the name of William Pynchon's boyhood home in the 
English county of Essex, for it was called Springfield. 

This was the beginning of English life in central and 
western Massachusetts. Other settlements sprang up, 
— Northampton and Hadley and Westfield and Deer- 
field. The Bay Path, shortened into a more direct route 
between the Connecticut and Boston, became the regular 
highway for western travel, dotted with scattered ham- 
lets, until at last the whole Connecticut valley was 
brought into touch with the Bay, and finally joined to 
it in government. 

But William Pynchon, as is often the case with pro- 



58 

motors and organizers of great enterprises, came at last 
into disfavor with those whom he had favored. He 
would not subscribe to certain forms and doctrines laid 
down by the strict Puritans of Boston ; he even wrote 
a book which they deemed wrong and harmful in its 
religious teachings, and they took the brave treasurer 
of the colony so sternly to task that at last, disheartened 
and discouraged, he turned his back on his forest home, 
and returned to England, never again to see the growing 
and prospering colony which his ability had organized, 
his wisdom planted, and his courage protected. 

Certain of his descendants, however, notably his 
eldest son, remained with the colony, growing with its 
growth, so that in Springfield and the region roundabout 
the name of Pynchon — which Hawthorne, too, has im- 
mortalized — is remembered and honored as that of the 
founder and first developer of that fertile and pros- 
perous section of Massachusetts along the Bay Path, 
from Worcester to the Berkshires. 



HOW YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE FOUND 
HIMSELF IN HOT WATER. 

THERE once lived in old England a remarkable 
boy ; he grew to be a remarkable man. As you 
enter the great Public Library in Boston, you may see 
in a niche to the left of the entrance, in the wide vesti- 
bule, a bronze statue of heroic size and splendid work- 
manship. It is Macmonnies's statue of this remarkable 
Englishman, — Sir Harry Vane, the boy governor of 
Massachusetts. 

He was not exactly a boy governor; but he was 
scarcely twenty-four years old when the freemen of 
the Massachusetts Bay colony elected him governor, 
and twenty-four, it must be admitted, is rather young 
for a governor of Massachusetts. 

He was born in a fine old manor house in the village 
of Hadlow, in the county of Kent in England, in the 
year 1612. He was but eight years old when the Pil- 
grims landed at Plymouth, but even at that age he 
made a sensation. 

His father was a great officer of state, who loyally 
served the obstinate King Charles I. ; but this small boy 
was almost as obstinate in his opinions as was the king 
in his. For about the time the Pilgrims landed, and 
when young Harry Vane was a small boy in his big 

59 



6o 



English home, he became so stout a Httle Puritan that 
he absolutely refused to take the oath of conformity to 
the king's religion in the church at Westminster, because 
his conscience would not permit ! And later, when he 
was a young man, although his father commanded and 
the king begged him to ** conform " to the established 
religion, " young Sir Harry Vane," as he was always 
called, to distinguish him from the elder Sir Harry, his 
father, persistently refused to change his opinions, 
because he believed so thoroughly in what is termed 
*' liberty of conscience and religious freedom." 

Hoping to find this larger liberty in America, young 
Sir Harry Vane forsook his English home and came 
over the sea to Massachusetts. He was then but 
twent\'-three. He was received with a salute of cannon 




6i 

and a great flourish of trumpets, for the son of the king's 
comptroller was considered a great addition. 

Sir Harry Vane was a bright, earnest, energetic, and 
lovable young man, and he soon became so popular 
with the people of Boston and the bay that the very 
next year after his arrival they elected him governor of 
the Massachusetts Bay colony ; and the first thing he 
did was to get the royal standard of the king from one 
of the ships In the harbor, and unfurl it, with a mighty 
salute, above the fort in the town ; then he appointed a 
committee to revise the colony laws. That's like most 
young men, you know, when they get into power. 
First they say "See me!" and then they start in to 
change things. And young Sir Harry Vane was only 
twenty-four! 

That was in 1636, the very year in which brave 
William Pynchon broke his way through the forests and 
by the Bay Path to the settlement of Springfield, and 
the opening up of the western lands of Massachusetts. 

But popularity does not always mean success. It is, 
indeed, a most uncertain condition. And this Sir Harry 
Vane speedily discovered. 

Already there were entering into the little colony 
disturbing elements. One Roger Williams, called by 
future ages the " apostle of religious liberty," stirred up 
the stricter Puritans at Boston and Salem and Plymouth 
to protest and anger. In fact, he led so many " astray," 
as the ministers declared, and rendered himself so ob- 
noxious to the gov^ernment, that it was finally voted to 
get rid of him by shipping him home to England. But 
Roger Williams was not to be caught napping. He 



62 



r— 










^ -^ ' 


IH 


f^l 


^^fe=-^ 


1 ^ 


^ 




1' - ^ ^'^ '^kM 


■ 


i 




/^WMm| 


1 






1 


mm 






^ 




1 iHHHllii^l w. ^^^ 


H 


lilK 


y'J^ I ■IHP 




Wk 


^1 




HN 


^m 






M 






^ 


■ 




s 


• - 


y 


^^s — 
















^¥? 



gave the Boston authorities the slip, — Hterally " took to 
the woods," was befriended by the Indians, and at last 
founded Rhode Island, or what were first called the 
" Providence Plantations." 

Following on the heels of this came Indian troubles, 
almost the first in the history of the colony. Irre- 
sponsible and meddling strangers worried into war the 
strong tribe of Indians known as the Pequots, boldest 
and bravest of New England Indians. The colonies 
along the bay were threatened with massacre, and 
almost before he knew it Sir Harry Vane had an Indian 
war on his hands. 

This Pequot war of Sir Harry Vane's day began in 
Connecticut. That colony, settled by Massachusetts 



63 

men, naturally looked to the stronger colony for aid 
when the Pequo't Indians, stirred to revenge by the 
persecutions and encroachments of the traders and 
borderers, broke out into retaliation. The horrors of 
an Indian war were too terrible to allow any risk to be 
run, and at once Governor Vane acted. Endicott, the 
stern flag cutter, was sent with three ships to destroy 
the Indians on Block Island, at the mouth of Long Is- 
land Sound. He did this cruelly but effectively. The 
Pequots, retahating, laid waste the Connecticut valley, 
whereupon Captain John Mason, with ninety men from 
Plymouth and Boston, charged down, in May, 1637, 
upon the palisaded Pequot village, near where the town 
of Stonington now stands. Four hundred Indian allies 
joined the expedition; but they deserted before the 
fight, which was brief and bloody. The Pequot village 
was surprised, stormed, set on fire, and most of its in- 
habitants killed. In this stern but horrible manner were 
the Pequots overthrown and well-nigh exterminated, 
and the immediate danger of Indian invasion a\erted. 
Not for a generation did the Indians again break out 
into war. Connecticut was brought into closer relations 
with Massachusetts, and the tide of emigration from old 
England to New England steadily increased. 

But war does not by any means stop progress, — it is 
often a developer; and it was while this Pequot war was 
going on that the governor, young Sir Harry Vane, 
presided over the assembly which voted a sum of money 
to found a college. 

On the beautiful west or main gate of Harvard Uni- 
versity you may read the story. Carved in a stone tablet 



64 

set in the brick pier of the north wall is this inscription 
in the quaint spelling of our forefathers: 

" By the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, 28 
October 1636, Agreed to give 400 £ towards a schole 
or colledge whereof 200 £ to be paid next year & 
200 £ when the work is finished and the next Court to 
appoint wheare and what building. 15 November 1637 
the colledge is ordered to bee at Newe Towne. 2 May 
1638 It is ordered that New Towne shall hencefor- 
ward be called Cambridge. 15 March 1639 it is or- 
dered that the colledge agreed upon formerly to bee 
built at Cambridge shall bee called Harvard Colledge." 

This last record, now inscribed in stone, was made 
after Sir Harry Vane had gone home to England, and 
when a certain John Harvard, minister of the church at 
Charlestown, dying without children, left his hbrary 
and one half of all his possessions to help on the new 
college. Thus it became Harvard College, now de- 
veloped into the great university. A bronze statue of 
the gentle founder and benefactor stands in the green 
triangle before Memorial Hall ; and in the old burying 
ground at Charlestown, upon a tall granite shaft, you 
may read on the eastern face : " On the twenty-sixth 
day of September, A.D. 1828, this stone was erected 
by the graduates of the university at Cambridge, in 
honor of its founder, who died at Charlestown on the 
twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1638." 

So the terrors of Indian war and the triumphs of 
education came in the midst of other experiences to 
mark the governorship of young Sir Harry Vane. 
Scarcely, however, had these been recorded before fresh 



65 

trouble came. A new religious dissension shook the 
little colony like an ague. It was all due to a woman, 
quite as remarkable in her way as any of those early 
New England men. This was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
who held advanced religious opinions, and was the first 
woman lecturer and founder of the first woman's club 
in New England. She was so bright in intellect and 
brilliant in conversation, so very impulsive and some- 
times so very unwise in action, that not one of the 
ministers of the colony could stand against her, and so 
they banished her. 

But before the end came she had drawn all the Bay 
into her dispute with the ministers, and people took 
sides for or against her; and among those who took 
her part was the governor. Sir Harry Vane himself. 

The united ministers of the Bay colony were, however, 
too strong for Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and Sir Harry 
Vane. But the fight waxed fierce and hot. The colony 
became divided into two political parties, for in that. day 
religion was politics. 

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson had a sharp tongue and knew 
how to use it. She did not spare her opponents. The 
ministers, as they believed, had right on their side, and 
they did not spare Mrs. Hutchinson or those who fol- 
lowed her lead. They plainly called them heretics, 
and heresy in those stern days was one of the things 
that the law stamped out with heroic measures. 

Sir Harry protested as the champion of woman's 
rights and freedom of speech ; the ministers stormed 
and threatened ; and there is no telling to what extremes 
they might not have gone had not clear-headed, just, 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — 5 



66 

and wise John Winthrop stepped in as a sort of arbitra- 
tor and settled things for a while. 

Young Sir Harry Vane did not find it any easier to 
secure religious and personal liberty in New England 
than in old England. He wished to do the right thing, 
too, but he found it hard work to believe that other 
people were right. 

He sided wath Mrs. Anne Hutchinson against the 
ministers; so did Boston; but the "suburbs" sided 
with the ministers, and it became a question whether 
Boston should rule the colony or the colony Boston. 

Sir Harry Vane was very bold and bright ; but, like 
most young men, he dearly loved to have his own way. 
When he found he could not, he " got mad," like any 
boy, and said he "wouldn't play." In other words, 
he threatened to give up the governorship and go home 
to England. Then he thought better of it and said he 
was " sorry." 

But things got no better, and at last, in the spring of 
1637 (on Cambridge Common, because the "suburbs" 
did not dare to go to Boston), the "freemen" of the 
Bay colony held an open-air convention, that almost 
ended in a free fight over the question of religious and 
political rights. The ministers and the colony won. 
Sir Harry Vane was defeated. John Winthrop was 
again elected governor, and young Sir Harry Vane 
turned his back on the colony and went home at last 
to England. 

As for Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, she was driven into 
exile, — "banished from Boston!" — and later w^as killed 
by the Indians in a terrible massacre in the New York 



67 

colony, near what is now New Rochelle. It is a sad 
story, and one that we, in this enlightened age, can 
scarcely understand. But the ministers did have law 
on their side. They were authorized by their charter 
to rid themselves of all objectionable persons, and Mrs. 
Anne Hutchinson certainly was, in their estimation, 
most objectionable. The safety of the commonwealth, 
they believed, depended upon her banishment, and so 
she had to go. 

Young Sir Harry Vane had not been. of great benefit 
to tlie colony, apparently ; but he had led the people 
to think for themselves, and to make a stand against 
what in these days one might call the " church trust," 
which almost held Massachusetts in thrall. 

He was defeated, but that very defeat left the people 
thoughtful, and out of his stand for what he considered 
right and justice came in due time that final separation 
of church and state which is the very keynote of Ameri- 
can liberty, of freedom of thought and speech and action. 
Let us be thankful for young Sir Harry Vane. 

He became a great man in England, the honest sup- 
porter of the Commonwealth, the stout opponent of 
what he believed to be Oliver Cromwell's personal 
power. Read English history and the dramatic story 
of Cromwell's famous burst of temper: " Oh, Sir Harry 
Vane ! Sir Harry Vane ! The Lord deliver me from Sir 
Harry Vane!" 

To the last Vane stood boldly out for the liberties of 
England, and when the great Cromwell was succeeded 
by the petty Charles Stuart, second of the name. Sir 
Harry Vane was declared by that spiteful monarch 



68 

" too dangerous to let live." Charges were trumped up 
against him, and he died upon the scaffold, — a martyr 
to liberty, a hero to the last. 

His connection with the story of Massachusetts was 
brief but eventful, and it is for us to remember that to 
Sir Harry Vane Americans and Englishmen owe very 
much, as the man who, alike in America and England, 
boldly withstood what he considered tyranny, and gladly 
died a martyr to the cause of liberty. 

That spirit lived again in the brave men of one hun- 
dred and fifty years later, who, profiting by his example, 
dared to stand out against the tyranny of an English 
king, and to show America the open door to freedom. 

As governor of Massachusetts he had a stormy ex- 
perience, and found himself, indeed, in hot water ; but 
Massachusetts honors and reveres the memory of her 
boyish governor, young Sir Harry Vane. 



HOW MRS. SHERMAN'S PIG ALMOST 
UPSET THE GOVERNMENT. 

IN the very year in which young Sir Harry Vane was 
governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony — that is, 
in 1636 — there came to Boston a traveHng salesman 
who represented an English business house. His name 
was George Story, and he lodged at the house of a Mrs. 
Sherman. 

He had samples from which to take orders, and he 
was, in fact, what we call in America a "drummer." 
He hoped to get many orders for his goods in Boston, 
send them home to England, and make a comfortable 
commission on his sales. 

But George Story, the drummer, was not welcomed 
in Boston. The Boston people had a common, neigh- 
borly interest in one another, and preferred to keep all 
business and all commissions among themselves, instead 
of sending them off to England. 

"We'll patronize home industries," they said, "keep 
what money there is here, and let our merchants do 
their own business with England, rather than through 
a stranger who does no benefit to the town." 

So the merchants and magistrates of Boston made it 
most unpleasant for George Story, the drummer. They 
considered him a most undesirable person, and as there 

69 



70 

was a law against obnoxious or objectionable persons 
staying more than three weeks in the town, they haled 
George Story before a magistrate, who fined him as an 
''alien." 

Now this magistrate was one of the solid men of Eos- 
ton, Captain Robert Keayne, — a prosperous merchant, 
a rich landowner, and the first captain of the famous 
'* Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," which 
still exists as one of the peculiar institutions of Boston. 

But George Story was very angry at the way in 
which he had been treated, and was especially angry at 
Captain Keayne as the magistrate who fined him. 

** I'll get square with him some day," he said ; and he 
did. 

It seems that Widow Sherman, at whose house George 
Story boarded, kept a pig, and this pig, like most of its 
kind, was of a roving disposition, very irresponsible, 
and had a troublesome habit of not staying where it 
belonged. 

It took to wandering off, and rooted and grunted 
about the grounds of Captain Robert Keayne, who had 
a comfortable house on the corner of what are now 
Washington and State streets, just opposite to where 
the old Statehouse stands. 

Captain Keayne saw this pig wandering along State 
Street, and as that was most unpermissible,hetook thepig 
in hand, had it '' cried " through the town, and then, as no 
one claimed it, put it into his own pigpen, and gave notice 
that the owner could have the pig by proving property. 

But for some reason Mrs. Sherman never attempted 
to prove property or identify her pig. So when nearly 



71 




a year had passed by, Captain Keayne thought he had 
kept the pig long enough, and as undisputed possession 
was ownership, 
he courted the 
pig as his, and 
kihed It for win- 
ter pork. 

That action was 
watchful George 
Story's opportu- 
nity for revenge. 
He knew of the 
whereabouts of 

Mrs. Sherman's pig, even if she did not, and as soon as 
the pig became pork, he induced Mrs. Sherman to be- 
lieve that Captain Keayne had defrauded her of a pig 
by kidnaping, concealing, and killing it. 

This was more than Captain Keayne could stand. 
He, a magistrate of Boston, objected to being called a 
pig stealer and pig murderer; so he became very angry, 
and brought suit against both Mrs. Sherman and George 
Story for slander and defamation of character. 

Of course, as Captain Keayne was one of the magis- 
trates, when his case came before the court the magistrates 
believed his story, and fined the Widow Sherman twenty 
pounds damages. 

Then George Story went about among the town 
people, telling Mrs. Sherman's sad story, and asking If it 
was not outrageous that a poor woman should be fined 
by the magistrates twenty pounds just because she had 
tried to get her rights from a rich, grasping capitalist. 



72 

Finally he persuaded Mrs. Sherman to appeal for justice 
and protection to the Great and General Court. 

The Great and General Court was not only the law- 
making and governing body of the Massachusetts Bay 
colony ; it was also the highest court of appeal, and its 
decisions were final. It was composed of twelve Assist- 
ants (or magistrates), who were elected by the freemen 
as a whole, and twenty-two Deputies, who were elected 
by the different towns. They all sat together — Assist- 
ants and Deputies — in the General Court, and acted as 
a single voting and la\ymaking body ; and the governor 
had not even the power of veto. 

When Mrs. Sherman's appeal for justice for the killing 
of her white pig came to a vote, the Great and General 
Court was divided. Thanks to the work of George 
Story among the people, although the Assistants were 
on the side of Captain Keayne, the sympathies of the 
Deputies were enlisted in behalf of Mrs. Sherman, and 
the Deputies being in the majority. Captain Keayne lost 
his case, and George Story had his revenge. 

But this did not end the matter. Both sides kept 
arguing and quarreling over the affair of Mrs. Sherman's 
pig. Even good Governor Winthrop took a hand in it, 
and because he sided with the Assistants he had to 
apologize to the people, although he would not change 
his opinion. He admitted that he had spoken per- 
haps too strongly, *' arrogating too much to myself," 
the good man said humbly, " and ascribing too little to 
others." He would, he assured them, '* be more wise 
and watchful hereafter." But even this manly avowal 
of his own overzeal did not save him from the peo- 



73 

pie's resentment, and next year he failed of reelection 
as governor, all on account of the pig. 

The wiser heads in the colony saw the impossibility 
of an elective assembly acting as a judicial tribunal ; in 
other words, the Deputies would decide as the people 
who elected them desired, and not as the real justice in 
the case demanded. At last, after a year of dispute and 
clamor, a compromise was arranged. The Assistants 
were to sit by themselves, the Deputies by themselves ; 
they should act separately, but any new act introduced 
in one body must have the consent of the other before 
it became a law. 

And that was the origin of the State legislature : the 
Assistants are the Senate; the Deputies are the House 
of Representatives (or the Assembly, as it is sometimes 
called). And so the Great and General Court of Massa- 
chusetts, which was almost thrown into demoralization 
by Mrs. Sherman's pig, was saved from disruption, and 
the colony along with it, by the simple and practical 
compromise brought about by the wisdom of Governor 
John Winthrop, often called the " Father of Massa- 
chusetts." 



HOW GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP 
"SINNED AGAINST THE LIGHT." 

GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP sat in the mag- 
istrate's chair in the little log meetinghouse in 
the New Town. That was the village which is to-day 
the city of Cambridge, and the little meetinghouse 
stood at what is now the corner of Mount Auburn and 
Dunster streets, just beyond Harvard Square. 

The governor, seated thus, looked upon a grave and 
somber company grouped about him, — ministers, magis- 
trates, and laymen, picked from the churches of the 
Bay colony, and met together in what was called a 
''synod," or council, summoned to deliberate on im- 
portant matters of church and state ; and, in the Mas- 
sachusetts Bay colony, the church was the state. 

In that solemn council were men foremost in the 
councils of the colony, — men who had given up home 
and country for loyalty to opinion and the courage of 
their convictions, men whose names are now a part of 
the splendid story of the United States. 

There was John Cotton, the great Puritan preacher, 
short and stout, red-faced and snowy-haired, dignified 
in bearing, charming in manner, an advocate for tolera- 
tion, but ready ever to yield to the will of the majority ; 
there sat that stern soldier of the church, John Endicott, 

74 



75 

large-framed, big-jawed, his harsh face and grizzled 
locks crowned by a black skullcap, his firm mouth 
thatched with a gray mustache and emphasized by a 




pointed beard; there, too, sat Thomas Dudley, the 
deputy governor, hard of heart, quick of temper, un- 
yielding of purpose ; John Norton, scholar and gentle- 
man, wit and fanatic; Thomas Shepard, young in years, 
but so wise in counsel that ** no man could despise his 
youth;" Hugh Peters, bigot and bully, — these and 
others, ''priests, magistrates, and deputies," presided 
over by that tactful, noble, broad-minded lawyer, that 
tolerant, tender, loving man, that excellent and most 
shrewd politician, Governor John VVinthrop, whose 



76 

portrait, with its well-known ruff and its Vandyke 
beard, you may see to-day in the senate chamber of 
the Massachusetts Statehouse, as you may see his 
marble statues in the chapel at Mount Auburn and in 
the Capitol at Washington, or his bronze statue standing 
with its back to the subway in ScoUay Square, in Boston. 
A great man was Governor Winthrop ; but sometimes 
even the great ones falter, and you shall see how, in 
this first Synod of Massachusetts, as it is called. Gov- 
ernor Winthrop " sinned against the light." 

The year was 1637 ; the month was September, — that 
lovely New England month, when Cambridge looks its 
best. But that solemn assembly thought little of grass 
or tree or flower. The governor had cantered soberly 
across from his fair estate of Ten Hills Farm on the 
Mystic, in what is now Somerville, and as he rode 
across country to Cambridge Common, that Septem- 
ber landscape, no doubt, was as fair and beautiful as 
when Whittier described it in his poem, '' The King's 
Missive: " 

" The autumn haze lay soft and still 

On wood and meadow and upland farms ; 
On the brow of Snow Hill the great windmill 

Slowly and lazily swung its arms ; 
Broad in the sunshine stretched away, 
With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay; 
And over water and dusk of pines 
Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. 

*'The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, 
The sumac added its crimson fleck, 
And double in air and water showed 
The tinted maples along the Neck; 



11 

Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist, 
And gentian fringes of amethyst, 
And royal plumes of goldenrod, 
The grazing cattle on Gentry trod." 

But not of frost flower nor gentian nor goldenrod 
did Governor Winthrop think, that September day, as 
he rode to the synod at Cambridge, His thoughts were 
rather as to how he might square his own sense of jus- 
tice with the stern and harshly drawn lines of his fellow- 
magistrates, who, yielding to the narrow teaching of the 
ministers, had declared to those who did not agree with 
them on points of doctrine that " New England was no 
place for such as they." He, too, changing from kind- 
heartedness to harshness, because he determined to side 
with the majority, had said to Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
as he banished her from the colony: "Your cause is 
not to be suffered. . . . We see not that any should 
have authority to set up any other exercises besides 
what authority hath set up here already." For Gov- 
ernor Winthrop, though in most things a great and 
noble man, was a wonderful manager of men, and knew 
that to manage men the politician must often give up 
his own desires and go over to the side of the majority ; 
and in the Bay colony, the ministers, with their hard 
and narrow opinions, were the leaders of the majority. 

Roger Williams had come with a mission and mes- 
sage, and had been driven away ; young Sir Harry Vane 
had come with a desire for wider liberty, and had been 
forced out of the field ; Anne Hutchinson had come 
as the apostle of free speech, and had been banished. 
Each one in turn had been the bearer of a light that, 



78 

properly trimmed and managed, might have shown the 
whole land the way to liberty long before the day that 
finally came. Governor Winthrop was a friend to Wil- 
liams and to Vane ; he could even see a good side to Mrs. 
Anne Hutchinson's bold teachings. He was the fore- 
most man in the colony, — leader, guide, and governor, 
— and had he but accepted and used the light that shed 
the first glow of liberty on the land, he might have 
been the greatest man of colonial America. As it was, 
for policy's sake, and for the sake of peace and of place, 
he bent to the demands of the ministers, drove out those 
who differed, and said to them: *'Go! The world is 
wide; there is no place for 3/ou among us." 

This synod of September, 1637, was convened espe- 
cially to root up and stamp out heresy, and in those 
days heresy meant whatever the Puritans of the Bay 
colony did not believe. 

The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay colony came 
across the sea to establish a religious community of 
their own kind. Their charter permitted them to rid 
themselves of all obnoxious or objectionable persons 
who were hostile to the peace of the colony. A heretic 
— that is, one who believes as I do not — was esteemed 
by the fathers of Massachusetts both objectionable and 
obnoxious, and therefore to be got rid of. 

So the synod gathered at Cambridge in 1637 to 
consider and to take steps to choke out the heresies 
that had somehow crept into the community, and which, 
as they declared, *' threatened the common weal." 

They sat in session for twenty days in that fair Sep- 
tember weather, and they found '* eighty-two opinions, 



79 

some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe," 
so their report declared, — a pretty big list of " heresies " 
for a carefully guarded colony of small proportions and 
of but seven years' growth. 

But some of those considered the chief of heretics 
were such persons as Roger Williams, Sir Harry Vane, 
John Wheelwright, and Anne Hutchinson, and these 
bold, brilliant leaders had drawn to themselves some of 
the very best and brainiest people in the colony. It was 
high time, the rulers said, that the ministers and teach- 
ers took a firm stand, or these ''heresies " might divide 
the fold and endanger the church. 

The synod, with scarcely a dissenting voice or vote, 
declared relentless and unceasing war upon all new 
ideas, against all heresies in religion or action ; and 
again. Governor Winthrop, shutting his eyes to the 
truth, forgetting the bold stand of Roger Williams, the 
noble utterances of Sir Harry Vane, the truthful re- 
bukes of Anne Hutchinson, repeated his declaration : 
" We see not that any should have authority to set up 
any other exercises besides what authority hath set up 
here already." 

This decision meant that, as the colony had decreed 
a certain form of religion, to that form every one must 
subscribe, or leave the colony. The people of Massa- 
chusetts had published as their decree the very procla- 
mation from which they had fled across the sea, leaving 
their pleasant English homes. Toleration and liberty 
of conscience were not yet born in America. 

" It is said," wrote one of those men of the synod, 
*' that men 'ought to have liberty of their conscience, and 



8o 

that it is persecution to debar them of it. I can rather 
stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment 
to think that the brains of men should be parboiled in 
such impious ignorance." 

The men of Massachusetts were not yet ready for 
the light which the men of Massachusetts themselves in 
a later day set aflame, to show the way to liberty. Sir 
Harry Vane and Roger Williams were ahead of their 
time. But their time came at last, and Massachusetts 
was first among the peoples of the earth to lead the 
columns of freedom ; but it took one hundred and thirty 
years and more to reach that glorious standpoint. In 1 63 7 
the synod of Massachusetts fettered the limbs of freedom. 

For that decree of banishment or death against those 
who differed from them was final. It was the central 
law by which Massachusetts was governed for over a 
century, — by which Baptists were harried, Quakers per- 
secuted and martyred, and all "dissenters" silenced, 
until that better day when the Geneva bands of the 
ministers gave place to that spirit of Christ which said, 
" Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them," and brought 
to fulfillment in Boston and throughout the growing Bay 
colony that prophecy of Boston's brave old citizen of 
those days of proscription, as given by Whittier : 

" Upsall, gray with his length of days, 
Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn : 

* Men of Boston ! give God the praise ! 
No more shall innocent blood call down 
The bolts of wrath on your guilty town; 
The freedom of worship dear to you 
Is dear to all, and to all is due. 



8i 



" * I see the vision of days to come, 

When your beautiful City of the Bay 

Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, 

And none shall his neighbors' rights gainsay ; 

The varying notes of worship shall blend 

And as one great prayer to God ascend ; 

And hands of mutual charity raise 

Walls of salvation and gates of praise ! ' " 



Brooks's bay sta.— 6 



HOW AN ANGEL OF THE LORD FOUGHT 
FOR THE PEOPLE OF HADLEY. 

NEARLY thirty years had passed since that Sep- 
tember day when Governor Winthrop rode across 
country from the Ten Hills Farm to the gathering of 
the synod in the log meetinghouse at Cambridge. 

As things went in those days of effort and struggle, 
matters had gone fairly well with the little, self-defended 
colony along the bay shore. It had been undisturbed 
by the great events that were shaking thrones and 
uncrowning kings in England, simply because Massa- 
chusetts, under intelligent, if narrow, leadership, looked 
after her own concerns. She built, fished, farmed, 
traded, exhorted, constrained, and compelled, saying 
nothing to king or Parliament, unless it were, '* Hands 
off!" when king or Parliament sought to impose unjust 
commands upon her. 

** We own New England, not you. We will govern 
ourselves," was the air assumed by Massachusetts when 
she and the other colonies north of Long Island Sound, 
by combining in the New England Confederacy, made 
the first step toward colonial union. 

The New England Confederacy was brought about by 
fear as well as self-interest. The settlements, or town- 
ships, in Massachusetts and throughout New England 

82 



83 

were made by splits from congregations, or by with- 
drawals because of religious differences. So each little 
town had its own peculiar views, which were not always 
the same as those held in other towns ; but as time went 
on, people began to yield a little in their opinions. 
They saw, too, that the colonies of New England were 
threatened by foes without, whose pressure urged a 
closer union between the friends and foes within. Across 
the Connecticut, the Dutchmen of New York were 
crowding the Englishmen of New England ; in the north, 
the Frenchmen of Canada were ever full of a desire to 
conquer their English neighbors in the south; while 
within their own limits and alike on their western and 
northern borders, the New England colonists ever had 
before their eyes the threatening horrors of Indian war. 

Then, too, the men of New England were prospering 
in trade and barter, and saw the need of a business 
union. So fear and self-interest alike combined to urge 
the New Englanders into friendlier and closer union. 
This came about at last, when, in 1643, the colonies of 
Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New 
Haven joined themselves into a confederacy for mutual 
benefit, protection, and defense, under the name of 
the " United Colonies of New England." 

Thirty-nine towns, with a population in all of twenty- 
four thousand inhabitants, made up this league and 
confederacy. Of these Massachusetts Bay counted 
fifteen thousand within her own borders, and was com- 
pelled, therefore, to pay the most toward expenses and 
contribute the largest number of men as soldiers for 
defense. Naturally the Bay colony wished to have 



84 



the most to say ; so, while by the terms of the confeder- 
ation she had really no more authority than the small- 
est of the four, the Bay colony tried to lead, and often 
got into dispute with the other three. 

But each of the four colonies saw that it was unwise 
to let these disputes run into real quarrels. Each was 
necessary to the other, and '* United we stand, divided 
we fall" was an easily understood motto. How much 
that union of the four New England colonies led to 
the later plan of American union and independence it 
is not easy to say. It. undoubtedly set men to think- 
ing, especially when, after a while, a tyrannical king 
broke up and absorbed the confederacy into his own 
royal provinces ; but in those mid-years of the century 
it was a wise and proper thing to have achieved, as the 
men of New England speedily discovered when there 
broke upon them, in 1675, the open menace of a deter- 
mined Indian war. Then Massachusetts took the lead. 

England, indeed, was too busy 
to bother with its colonies, and so 
the go-ahead, assertive Massa- 
chusetts colonists were left to 
take care of themselves. The 
war which now threatened the 
peace of the colonies is known 
as King Philip's War, although 
Philip of Pokanoket was no king. 
He was simply the chief of the 
once powerful tribe of the Wam- 
panoags. He was the younger 
Philip of Pokanoket. son of that Massasoit with whom 




85 

the Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony, in the days of 
Captain Standish, had wisely made a treaty, and kept 
it unbroken for over forty years. 

But Massasoit was dead ; Captain Miles Standish was 
dead ; Governor William Bradford and Governor John 
Winthrop were dead. The old friendships weakened, 
and Philip, or Metacomet, as his Indian name runs, was 
sagamore and leader in the lodges of the Wampanoags. 

Philip was a fiery and spirited red man. He chafed 
under the lordship of the white " intruders ;" he saw the 
lands of the red men gradually passing into the hands of 
their white neighbors. They had been honestly bought 
and paid for, but real estate dealings were something 
which the comniunistic Indians never could really under- 
stand. Philip knew the menace of the increasing num- 
bers of the English colonists; he misunderstood the de- 
sign of that good John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, 
in converting and civilizing the Indians, and saw in all 
this housing of Eliot's christianized red men, who were 
called the *' praying Indians," only a design to weaken 
the red man and increase the strength of the white man. 

*' That good John Eliot " is one of the historic figures 
of Massachusetts. A graduate of Cambridge Uni- 
versity in England, he came to Massachusetts in 163 1, 
and became the minister of the church in Roxbury, 
where he lived near the Eliot Square of to-day. There 
he became filled with the desire to convert to Chris- 
tianity the Indians of New England ; and from there he 
went on his pilgrimage as *' apostle to the Indians from 
Cape Cod to the Merrimac." For them he lived and 
labored, learning their language, civilizing and Chris- 



86 

tianlzing them, until in Massachusetts alone there were 
nearly four thousand of Eliot's *' praying Indians," as 
they were called. A saintly, prayerful, pure, and well- 
meaning reformer was this noble-souled John Eliot. 
His efforts were distrusted by his own brethren and 
misjudged by the Indians, and all that we have now to 
remember the good apostle by, besides his sainted 
memory, are the most costly and rarest of old books, 
"Eliot's Indian Bible," and his word for ** chief " or 
*' leader " in the Indian tongue, which has now become 
a familiar word in American politics, " mugwump." 

But his influence was wider than this, for it is now a 
well-recognized fact that but for the loyalty and devo- 
tion of Eliot's praying Indians the league of Philip of 
Pokanoket would have been a successful combination, 
and the colony of Massachusetts Bay would have been 
either exterminated or weakened beyond rescue. 

It was the conversion, and, as Philip considered it, 
the weakening of these praying Indians that especially 
inflamed that fiery son of Massasoit, and urged him into 
vengeance upon the white man. 

For thirteen years the red leader bided his time, 
sowing the seeds of discontent and distrust among the 
neighboring tribes, until finally, in 1675, all the horror 
of Indian war broke upon the colonies of Massachusetts 
and Plymouth. 

Villages were sacked and burned ; soldiers were am- 
bushed and killed ; women and children were massacred 
or dragged into captivity. The security of forty years 
of peace was broken. War was in the land. 

Swanzy and Dartmouth, Middleboro and Taunton 



87 

and Brookfield, tasted all the savage horrors of Indian 
attack and massacre, and so, gradually, the trouble set 
westward, until it came with tomahawk and torch into 
the fair valley of the Connecticut, where Springfield, 
Northampton, and Hadley lay along the beautiful river. 

Hadley, by its position, had been made a point of 
rendezvous and departure for operations offensive and 
defensive ; it became, therefore, a mark for Indian raid 
and assault, when Philip the sagamore came to rouse 
the tribes of the Connecticut valley to war upon the 
white men. 

It was on the first day of September, in the battle 
year of 1675, that the people of Hadley, assembled in 
their meetinghouse to keep a day of fasting and of 
prayer, were suddenly startled by the horrible Indian 
yell. 

"The Indians are upon us!" they cried; and forth- 
with the armed men rushed to the palisades. 

But they were too late. All that previous night 
their red foemen had been making ready. To the 
south of the town a careful ambush had been laid, and 
from the north, against the slender defense of pali- 
sades, seven hundred Indians swooped down upon the 
devoted town to force the fortifications and drive the 
startled inhabitants of Hadley into the dreadful south- 
ern ambuscade. 

The palisades at the north, though valiantly de- 
fended, were speedily forced. A mob of screeching 
Indians swarmed into the little hamlet ; the defenders 
met them bravely, and forced them off; but, reen- 
forced, they came crowding back, and the men of 



88 



Hadley, driven before the savage onrush, fell back for 
a last desperate stand upon the village green. 

Then it was that a strange thing came to pass ; for, 
as the men of Hadley quailed before their savage foe- 
men, suddenly a stranger stood among them. 

No one knew him. But when, with rapid movements 
and commanding voice, he formed the fighting men into 
a well-ordered array, they knew that a leader in battle 




had come to help them, and they unquestioningly obeyed 
him. Swiftly the line was formed ; swiftly it was 
strengthened ; as swiftly it charged upon the red 
invaders, the white-haired, military-looking leader urg- 
ing the defenders forward in their sortie. A word here, 
a gesture there, a massing at one point, a flanking 
at another, and speedily the tide of war was turned. 
The men of Hadley with a resistless charge drove back 



89 

the Indian mass, and, forcing it through the ruined 
paHsades, sent it flying to the north, routed, scattered, 
overthrown. 

But when, the danger over, the retreat recalled, the 
village saved, the men of Hadley once more gathered 
on their village green, the mysterious stranger had 
disappeared. 

No one saw him come ; no one saw him go. Do you 
remember the heaven-sent messengers of whom the 
Roman legends 'tell us, who, at the battle of the Lake 
Regillus, appeared just in the nick of time to save the 
day for Rome ? In much the same way this gray-haired 
stranger came and fought for the people of Hadley until 
the foe was routed. Macaulay's stirring ballad tells the 
Roman story : 

*' ' Rome to the charge ! ' cried Aulus ; 

' The foe begins to yield ! 
Charge for the hearth of Vesta ! 

Charge for the Golden Shield ! 
Let no man stop to plunder, 

But slay and slay and slay ; 
The gods who live forever 

Are on our side to-day.' " 

And then, the battle over, the heaven-sent aUies dis- 
appeared. For, says the ballad : 

"Straight again they mounted, 
And rode to Vesta's door ; 
Then, like a blast, away they passed, 
And no man saw them more." 

Just SO vanished the man who turned the battle and 
won the day at Hadley. Silently he came ; silently he 



90 

left. And the people, quick to believe in miracles, 
could come to but one conclusion. 

" It was an angel," they declared, *' sent of God 
upon this special occasion for our deliverance." 

And so they maintained for years. But time at last 
unraveled the mystery, and now we know that the man 
who had appeared so suddenly, commanded so well, 
fought so valiantly, and disappeared so mysteriously, 
was none other than the fugitive English republican 
Major General William Goffe, the friend of Cromwell, 
the bravest of the parliamentary generals, the com- 
mander at Dunbar and at Worcester, the man who 
would have been the general in chief of the army of the 
Commonwealth and the successor of Cromwell as Lord 
Protector of England, had not the generals of Cromwell 
themselves brought back the Stuarts to power. But, 
more than all this, he was one of the judges who pre- 
sided at the trial which condemned Charles I. to death, 
and was therefore known for all time as *' Goffe the regi- 
cide." A fugitive from his home, a price upon his head, 
he and his companion, General Whalley, had found their 
way to Massachusetts and been secretly harbored and 
helped by a few faithful friends. From the windows of 
the house of his friend Mr. Russell at Hadley he had seen 
the Indian onslaught. His habits of command and lead- 
ership awoke in him and urged him to the aid of the vil- 
lagers. Putting himself at their head, he had routed the 
savage foe as he had routed the king's men at Dunbar, 
and then, his work accomplished, he had slipped into hid- 
ing again, and lived thus until his death, four years later. 

It is one of the romances of Massachusetts history, and 



91 

lights up that especially dark and gloomy time known 
as King Philip's War, so crowded with stories of sack 
and slaughter, of hairbreadth escape and furious battle, 
ended only by the treacherous slaughter of the brave 
but unskilled sagamore Philip, and the utter destruction 
of the Indians of New England as a foe to be feared. . 

Twelve out of ninety New England towns had been 
destroyed ; forty more had known massacre, sack, and 
slaughter; a thousand fighting men had fallen before 
the Indians' fury ; as many helpless women and children 
had perished, too; the war debts exceeded the colony's 
personal property, and for years were a burden on the 
people. But they paid the debt. 

Upon the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies the 
war had fallen with especial force. But they won. The 
Indians were simply obliterated as a factor longer to be 
dreaded or feared in the colony life, and as the men of 
Hadley saw, in the sudden appearance of the angel who 
was no angel, the helping hand of God, so they called 
the whole bitter war an act of Providence sent for their 
own " chastening." 

It did more than chasten ; it educated. For Massa- 
chusetts learned, from this Indian war, habits of wari- 
ness, watchfulness, energy, determination, and self-help. 
They grew to see and to know their own power ; and 
when the need came to face men even more crafty and 
determined than the crafty Philip, they were able to 
meet the crisis with a calm front and a determined 
mind, the first fruitage of that '' eternal vigilance " 
which to them, as to other patriots, has ever proved 
itself the " price of liberty." 



HOW SIR EDMUND ANDROS FACED 
TO THE RIGHT-ABOUT. 



flEUTENANT COLONEL SIR EDMUND AN- 
Lrf DROS, of Scarsdale's regiment of horse, bailie of 
Guernsey, and gentleman of the privy chamber, governor 
general of New England, and vice admiral of the fleet, 
had a face as long as his name and titles as he sat in his 
lodgings, on the corner of Elm 
and Hanover streets in Boston, 
on a certain April morning in the 
year 1689. 

The governor general certainly 
had reason to draw a long face, 
for he was in a sea of trouble. 
Rebellion threatened, riot was in 
the air, his orders were uncertain, 
and, to cap the climax, that very 
day young John Winslow had 
landed at the wharf in Boston, 
fresh from Nevis, an island of the 
British West Indies, where in after years a certain 
great American, one Alexander Hamilton, was born. 
Young John Winslow brought news by way of Nevis 
that put all Boston in a ferment. There had been a 
revolution in England, he said, and William, Prince of 

92 




Sir Edmund Andros. 



93 

Orange, had driven from the English throne James, 
Duke of York, a selfish, despotic, and unscrupulous 
king, and himself would rule as King of England. 

It was no new thing in those days for Boston to be in 
a ferment. In fact, it had been in perpetual hot water 
ever since Sir Edmund Andros had come to town. For 
he was the representative and mouthpiece of the tyranny 
of the last of the Stuart kings, the shrewd and tyrannical 
James Stuart, son of the first Charles and brother of the 
second. As Duke of York, James had given his name to 
the conquered colony of New Netherlands and to its lead- 
ing town, which he wrested from its Dutch owners by 
the soldiers of England and the men of Massachusetts, 
and had added the colony, with Andros as governor 
general, to the so-called " Dominion of New England." 

To call it the " province " or even the '' dominion " 
of New England meant to take the property of the colo- 
nists, without so much as saying " by your leave " to the 
Massachusetts Bay Company and its Puritan successors. 
It meant annulling the old charter, under which the Bay 
colony had grown and prospered. It meant unseating 
the governor elected by the freemen of Massachusetts, 
abolishing the Great and General Court, and making of 
Massachusetts a king's province instead of the people's 
commonwealth. It meant destroying and disallowing 
the confederacy which had been so helpful under its title 
of the " United Colonies of New England." 

After fifty years of home rule and religious union the 
people of the Bay colony were not content to submit 
calmly to such a wholesale upsetting of that old order, 
or to such a contemptuous overturning of all that 



94 

Massachusetts held dear. Town and country seethed 
with indignation and distrust. The men of Ipswich, 
twenty miles beyond Boston, rebelled against being' 
taxed without having any vote or voice in the matter 
(the very thing that led to the American Revolution 
almost a century later), and were duly punished by 
Andros, the soldier governor. Everywhere throughout 
the colony, criticism gave place to grumbhng, grumbling 
to protest, and protest to threats that needed only the 
spark of opportunity to set the fires of rebellion alight. 

And now John Winslow with his news from Nevis had 
furnished the opportunity. If William, Prince of Orange, 
the husband of an English princess and the head of the 
hospitable nation which had given shelter to the Puritans, 
had succeeded the tyrannical King James, then William 
was King of England, and Sir Edmund Andros had 
nothing whatever to say about the governing of the 
Bay colony, — unless he should come over to the side 
of William and proclaim him King of England. 

The people of Massachusetts knew this, and Sir 
Edmund Andros knew it, too ; so, when the news came 
to him at his lodgings in the house of Madam Rebecca 
Taylor on Hanover Street, — then known as the Middle 
Street, — the governor put on his scarlet coat and his 
colonel's hat and sword, and hastened down to the new 
fort he had built of palisades, on the crest of Corn Hill, 
or Fort Hill, as it came to be called, — now a leveled 
park at the foot of High Street, hemmed in by stores 
and warehouses. 

Safe in the house within the palisaded fort. Sir 
Edmund Andros tried to put a stop to th^ circulation 



95 

of the tidings which John Winslow had brought from 
Nevis. He clapped John Winslow into jail. But he 
had locked the stable door after the horse was stolen ; 
for already copies of the " Declaration of the Prince 
of Orange " were in the hands of the people. The news 
was out, even if John Winslow was in! 

Then, when the people saw the royal frigate Rose sail 
into the harbor, with her guns peeping out of the black 
portholes, when they noticed the gathering of English 
soldiers at Boston, and knew that the governor general 
had made his headquarters in the fort, the feehng 
against Sir Edmund grew yet more bitter. The uneasi- 
ness and indignation spread through the colony, and one 
morning in that same month of April, 1689, news came 
to Sir Edmund Andros that made him even more con- 
scious of the peril of his position. 

'* The people are rising," so the news ran. ** A mon- 
strous force of countrymen from the towns to the north 
of Boston is gathering under arms in Charlestown." 

*' The people are up, your Excellency," came another 
message. '* The country folks from the farms and vil- 
lages to the south of the town are marching upon Boston, 
vowing they will have your resignation or your head." 

Then the shrill, far-off, gradually approaching cry 
that no ruler ever likes to hear came to the governor's 
ears. 

''The citizens are up ! " That mob-cry meant, '' They 
are marching on the fort." 

The '' citizens " just then in the streets were really 
boys, of all ages and sizes, — the forerunners of all mobs 
and disturbances. They were rushing about the streets 



96 

swinging big clubs, shouting for King William, and mak- 
ing as much noise as possible. But behind them were 
the ''people in arms." Boston was in revolt. 

The leaders of the popular party acted speedily. They 
seized certain of the governor's right-hand men and 
locked them up in Boston jail. I hope they let out 
John Winslow at the same time, though I find no 
record of it. 

It was a hard time for Sir Edmund Andros. He 
might have used force and turned his redcoats on the 
people ; but, to his eternal honor, he did not, and a 
massacre was averted. All he could really do was to 
bluster, run up the royal flag on his little palisaded 
fort, and call the people of Massachusetts " a parcel of 
pestilent rebels! " 

But even in this Sir Edmund was wrong He was 
the rebel. The people were right. They were simply 
determined to restore and maintain the charter sol- 
emnly granted them, and under which they had lived 
and prospered for over half a century, — a charter which 
King James of England had neither the right to annul 
nor the power to overthrow, save the self-imposed right 
and the power of a tyrant. 

At noon of that eventful day, the i8th of April, 1689, 
the Puritan leaders, standing upon the balcony of the 
big wooden townhouse, where the famous old Statehouse 
which succeeded it still stands, — on Washington Street 
at the head of State Street, — read to the assembled 
people a long paper which they called a " Declaration 
of Rights." 

It was calm, but determined. The people of Massa- 



97 

chusetts could not forgive the high-handed way In which 
King James of England, and his representative Sir 
Edmund Andros, had deprived them of their just and 
lawful rights. But they made no threats, they uttered 
no demand for vengeance, they made no appeal to pop- 
ular passion. Like the law-abiding people they were, 
they simply stated their rights. Their leaders, in the 
declaration they had prepared, proclaimed the fact that 
the people of -Massachusetts Bay had taken from the 
hands of dangerous men the power to govern the colony, 
and would hold the power themselves until word how to 
act should come from the Parliament of England and 
the new king, William, Prince of Orange. This position 
they declared -they would hold in spite of Sir Edmund 
Andros, his ships, and his soldiers. 

The frigate Rose, even with her guns frowning at the 
portholes, did not bombard the town, as the citizens 
feared she would ; and for a very good reason. The 
captain of the frigate was a prisoner in the hands of the 
leader of the uprising, and he sent word to his frigate 
not to open fire, as his life would be in danger if they 
should attempt such a thing. 

But the guns of the fort were turned upon the town. 
The governor was In command. Would he resist? The 
" people in arms " pressed toward the little fortress- 
crowned hill. The guns did not speak. Instead, Sir 
Edmund Andros himself tried to escape to the Rose; 
but his boat was headed off and turned back, and he 
had to seek refuge In the fort once more. 

Then, at front and at rear, the people stormed against 
the fort. The garrison, without firing a shot, aban- 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — 7 



98 






L^ 




doned the guns. The people clambered up to the for- 
tifications, and turned the guns away from the town and 
against the cornered garrison. The fort was won with- 
out a blow. 

Then Sir Edmund, deeming discretion to be the bet- 
ter part of valor, proceeded to the townhouse under 
what is called a ** safe-conduct " that no one would 
harm him, and tried to settle things with the leaders 
of the revolt. 

But ** things" had gone too far. He was told that 
he must yield to the people, surrender to them the fort 
and the frigate, or it would be worse for him than it 
already was. So he yielded. 

The fort was surrendered; the frigate was given up; 
the governor general was held a prisoner in his own fort. 



99 

A colonial government was formed. A convention of 
freemen was called. Once again Massachusetts was 
under the old Puritan government, with her own elected 
governor and her own Great and General Court. " The 
freedom of Massachusetts," as one English writer de- 
clares, " had been won by her own sons." 

Twice did Sir Edmund Andros try to escape. He 
feared the people; he was not sure as to the temper of 
the new king. But he really had no cause to fear 
either king or people. For King William, after he heard 
his story, acquitted him of any intentional tyranny or 
deliberate wrongdoing. And the people of Massachu- 
setts felt no anger against him personally. They rather 
liked him, as a man. They knew that he was simply 
a soldier carrying out his orders. King James, the giver 
of orders, was out of the way, and Sir Edmund Andros 
was harmless. 

But Sir Edmund could not see this, so he was un- 
easy. Twice, as I have said, he tried to escape. Once 
he fled from the fort disguised as a woman ; but his 
soldier boots showed beneath his petticoats and betrayed 
him. The second time he got as far as Newport in 
Rhode Island ; but he was caught there and taken back 
to the fort on the hill. 

At last word came from England. King William was 
king indeed. Sir Edmund Andros was recalled to Eng- 
land to give an account of himself, and to be tried for 
his loyalty to the deposed King James. 

In July, 1689, he sailed away; and in the same ship 
went agents from the Bay colony to ask for justice for 
Massachusetts. 



lOO 

A new charter was granted. It was not what was 
asked for ; the form of government desired was refused. 

The Plymouth colony, Maine, and Acadia (or Nova 
Scotia) were annexed to Massachusetts. But the en- 
larged colony became a royal province, with a royal 
governor, appointed by the king. The Great and Gen- 
eral Court was restored, based, not on church member- 
ship, but on a property qualification ; and all laws made 
must be approved by the English government. 

Although the independence of Massachusetts freemen 
was thus restricted, their standing was far different from 
the condition imposed upon them by the tyranny of King- 
James. From that they had freed themselves ; they had 
seen and shown their real power, and it was therefore a 
grand thing for themselves and their children that they 
had thus boldly sent Sir Edmund Andros to the right- 
about. 



HOW THE MEN OF MASSACHUSETTS 
HELPED. 

CHANGE does not always bring satisfaction. It 
did not to the Bay colony, which had become a 
royal province. 

After Sir Edmund Andros had been sent to the 
right-about, and King James had made way for King 
William, the men of Massachusetts naturally expected 
that things would go according to their wishes. But 
things continued to go wrong. Popular government 
gave place to provincial government ; the king was more 
directly connected with the ruling of the province than 
ever. King William seemed to be more " kindly affec- 
tioned " to the Puritan commonwealth than King James 
had been ; but he really was not. The appointment of 
the Maine boy who became a successful treasure-hunter 
— Sir William Phips — as governor of the province was 
made by William, presumably as a concession to the 
desires of Massachusetts; but Sir William was King 
William's man, and his appointment was followed by 
that of other royal governors, who were all of them 
king's men and spent the most of their time in quarrels 
with the freemen of the province. 

They were, indeed, in continual hot water with the 
Great and General Court. Their salaries were always a 



102 

bone of contention. The council, intended as an aid to 
the governor, was usually at sword's point with him ; 
and what with witches, pirates, Frenchmen, and Indi- 
ans, the bewigged and ruffled gentleman sent over to 
rule the province of Massachusetts Bay found his lot 
anything but a happy one. As for the people them- 
selves, they felt that perhaps, like the frogs in the fable, 
they had only exchanged King Log for King Stork, 
and that unless they kept up that " eternal vigilance " 
which is the " price of liberty " they would be altogether 
eaten up, as the frogs were. 

But the people of Massachusetts Bay were not of the 
sort that will submit to being eaten. Yet life was tame 
enough in those small and solemn villages, and one 
accustomed to these busy days wonders, sometimes, 
what they could find to do besides just work. 

When you come to the story of the Salem witchcraft 
in your histories you must not at once conclude that the 
people of Massachusetts alone were to blame, and call 
them hard names for their cruelty and foolishness. 

Witchcraft was an old, old story in the world even 
when it broke out so terribly at Salem. The seventeenth 
century was really only half civilized, and people even in 
the most enlightened part of the world were supersti- 
tious and believed all sorts of nonsensical things, — luck 
and signs and omens. Some of us have not got over 
with them even to-day. 

When people discuss and dream over things they 
begin to believe in them ; and when in somber little 
Salem, where there were very few of what we should 
call sensible good times going on, the girls fell to telling 



I03 

ghost stories and talking over witchcraft and the " evil 
eye," — just as now they talk over hypnotism and mes- 
merism and other uncanny things, — they became so 
wrought up and excited that finally Lizzie Parrish, the 
minister's daughter, actually thought that Tituba, the 
little negro servant girl at her home, had bewitched her. 
Probably Tituba had cut up some pranks that were rather 
grev/some, for she was half Indian as well as half negro, 
and came from far-off Barbados, where the natives were 
full of superstition. At any rate, Mr. Parrish, the minis- 
ter, believed his nine-year-old daughter, because he did 
believe in witchcraft, you see. So when some of the 
other Salem girls declared that they were bewjtched too, 
the minister preached about it, and the sleepy little town 
had something to talk about, and gossiped until most of 
the people believed it, and at once began to wonder who 
was bewitching them, and accusing those they did not 
like. 

The thing grew into a craze. Sober judges and solemn 
ministers actually believed in it, and proceeded to try for 
witchcraft all who were accused. The lies and charges 
of mischievous, envious, or overwrought children devel- 
oped into a superstitious delusion that became an epi- 
demic and affected all classes and conditions of people. 
Accusations touched every rank, from the little negro 
slave girl to the wife of the royal governor. ** Ye shall 
not suffer a witch to live," was the old Bible text that 
became the colony's edict; and, acting under the law of 
old England, the witch hunters of New England sent 
innocent people to ignominious death. Twenty per- 
sons, in all, were put to death; hundreds were thrown 



I04 

into jail. The witchcraft craze, beginning with a circle of 
silly girls in Salem, outgrew the limits of that village and 
extended to Boston and other towns. And then, sud- 
denly, sensible people awoke to their foolishness and 
panic, and the whole temporary persecution ended almost 
as speedily as it began. Salem does not like to think 
of 1692 ; and yet, that famous Massachusetts seaport is 
better known throughout the land because of its witch- 
craft craze than as the home of Hawthorne or the cen- 
ter of foreign commerce. The world has remembered 
the smallest matter, not confined to Salem alone, and 
forgotten the real glories of the pushing seaport, whose 
sails at one time whitened every ocean and honored 
the name of the American sailor. 

A wise Providence, looking out for men and nations, 
rarely permits either states or people to stagnate. So 
the quiet, orderly, God-fearing men and women of that 
day of small things, who were driven into a witchcraft 
craze because of the utter lack of mental growth that 
comes to a bigoted, pleasure-lacking village in the dis- 
mal winter, were kept awake and stirred to effort and a 
real progress by their peppery French rivals who lived 
along the St. Lawrence, across the Canadian border. 

Then it came to pass that the men of Massachusetts 
played their part also in the broader history of the 
world. The despotic Stuart king, driven from his Eng- 
lish throne, found shelter and succor in France. And 
France was England's relentless and hereditary foe. 

From this came war, which, like the unskillful doctors 
of that illiterate day, bled all Europe for the fever of 
power. King William's War and Queen Anne's War 



I05 

sent their quarrels across the sea, and for half a cen- 
tury France and England struggled for possession in 
America as they strove for power in Europe. 

It ended in the English mastery of North America 
(1763). There could be no other logical outcome. The 
English had come to America to stay ; and, making good 
their holding by might as well as by right, by strength 
of will and force of arms, they staid ! 

In all of this the men of Massachusetts helped. They 
felt that they were doing God's work, as indeed they 
were ; for it was His wise design that on the shores of 
the North Atlantic should be planted, established, and 
developed a mighty English-speaking nation. But 
the ways of Heaven are often dark and intricate. As 
that hymn of Cowper's, sung by so many, many Mas- 
sachusetts boys and girls, begins : 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform;" 

SO what to us, looking backward, seems plain and 
necessary and logical, did, no doubt, to our perplexed 
and harassed forefathers of the Massachusetts Bay seem 
cruel and unintelligible. But no nation in all this world 
has ever prospered or grown into worth or greatness by 
peaceful ways alone. 

It was during the struggle with France that tlie 
American sailor and soldier — especially the Massachu- 
setts sailor and soldier — were laying the foundation of 
that record of excellence on sea and land that stretches 
from Phips to Farragut and Dewey and Sampson, from 
Louisburg to Santiago. 



io6 



The struggle began in cruel guise. France, desirous 
of conquest, raised up the Indian foemen of the colo- 
nies, and, again and again, led them across the border to 
surprise and sack and ravage the peaceful settlements of 
the Bay colony and its outlying posts, carrying off cap- 
tives and leaving the dead in farmyard or on hearth- 
stone. The villages in the Maine and New Hampshire 
countries were laid waste with fire and tomahawk. 
Haverhill was twice attacked, in 1697 and 1708; Deer- 
field was sacked in 1 704, and only the intrepid and de- 
termined resistance of the Massachusetts farmers and 
fishermen saved the colony from total destruction. 



ik^ 







m 



Retaliation became in- 
vasion. Led on by Colonel Ben- .^0^ jamin Church, 
a veteran of King Philip's war, over six hun- 

dred Massachusetts men marched into Maine in 1690, and 
fought a border fight with indifferent success; while Sir 



I07 

William Phips, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay 
colony, commanded the naval expedition which in the 
same year sailed out from Boston to the invasion of 
Canada and the capture of Port Royal and Quebec. 

It was New England's first sea venture. Port Royal 
fell in surrender to the Massachusetts men, but the land 
force raised for the invasion of Canada failed to unite, 
and Phips, striving to capture Quebec unaided, was 
defeated. 

Again Church harried the Indians in Maine and New 
Hampshire, and again the Massachusetts men sailed to 
the conquest of Canada. Neither venture succeeded as 
the invaders hoped ; the Indians were scattered, but not 
destroyed, and the fortresses of Canada held out against 
attack. But at last, under the direction of Shirley, the 
royal governor of Massachusetts, and led on by Pep- 
perell, a Massachusetts colonel, the finishing stroke was 
given when, in 1745, the strong fortress of Louisburg in 
Cape Breton was captured and the seamen and soldiers 
of New England showed that their years of struggle were 
making of them all reliable fighting men. For out of 
these fifty years of border war, from 1690 to 1745, the 
men of Massachusetts were being trained to service and 
schooled by fighting, and Church and Phips and Pep- 
perell laid the firm foundations from which came the suc- 
cesses in the final struggle with France and the greater 
struggle for independence. 

So you see how everything worked to one common 
end. For, by their determined fight for their charter 
with the King of England ; by their perpetual quarrels 
with the royal governors as to payment of salaries and 



io8 

the rights of the people; by the steady growth of 
thought which led them through religious intolerance, 
witchcraft, and bigotry into the broader light of that 
liberty which is charity; by their woes and worries 
under Indian forays and French invasions; by their 
courage and patriotism, wdiich sent into Canada, under 
the banner of their king, during that half century of 
French and Indian wars fully thirty thousand men for 
service against the foe at a cost of hundreds of thou- 
sands of hard-earned dollars, the men of Massachusetts 
were, becoming experienced soldiers, watchful patriots, 
public-spirited citizens, broader thinkers, and thus pre- 
paring to take the lead in that great army of freemen 
which was shortly to arouse, astonish, and enfranchise 
the world. 



HOW JAMES OTIS BECAME A 
OF FIRE." 



FLAME 



IN the year 1745 — the very year in which the great 
fortress of Louisburg surrendered to the army of 
Massachusetts farmers and fishermen — a young man of 
twenty came to Boston to enter the law 
office of Jeremiah Gridley, a famous 
Boston lawyer.- He was James Otis, 
the eldest son of Colonel Otis of Barn- 
stable, "down on the Cape." 

Even in those days Massachusetts 
was still largely rural. As late as 1 760 
her population was only about two hun- 
dred thousand. The towns were small 
and scattered, and Boston, with its pop- 
ulation of twenty thousand, was the 
nearest approach to a city. To it young 
men of ambition turned as the place to make their for- 
tunes, while even those who left it "for distant parts" 
ever cherished for it a love and a longing which remains 
with its sons and daughters to this day. 

One such young man, born on Milk Street, opposite 
the now famous Old South Meetinghouse, in 1706, had 
run away as a boy, seeking fame and fortune ; but, as 
soon as he had gained the footing which finally brought 

109 




James Otis. 



no 



him to greatness in far-off Philadelphia, he made it a 
rule to return every ten years for a visit to his dearly 
loved Boston and the Old South Meeting- 
house. And Boston boys still profit by 
the fund left to his native town, as a token 
of his love and generosity, by Benjamin 
Franklin, Boston born, though a citizen of 
Philadelphia. 

In I 745, when James Otis came to Bos- 
ton, that other ** old Boston boy," Benja- 
min Franklin, — patriot, philosopher, and 
leader, — was the best known man in all 
America and the best known American 
in all the world. 

Massachusetts boys, in 1745, already 
knew the story of Ben- 
jamin Franklin, for they 
read " Poor Richard's 
Almanac," if they read 
nothing else. And 'Toor 
Richard's Almanac " was 
Franklin's yearly contri- 
bution for the good and 
welfare of his country- 
men. No other book or publication of the day did so 
much toward making them thinking, frugal, and inde- 
pendent Americans. 

But young James Otis read many other things, for 
he was quite a scholar. He was, for that day, excel- 
lently educated. He had graduated from Harvard at 
eighteen, and, as I have said, at twenty went to Boston 




to study law in Mr. Gridley's office. When this school- 
ing was over he set up for himself as a lawyer in old 
Plymouth of the Pilgrims. But again Boston, with its 
wider opportunities, drew him away from the pleasant 
South shore, and, returning to Boston, he rapidly found 
fame and practice and came to be counted throughout 
the colonies as the brightest lawyer in Boston. 

But things were coming to pass in all the colonies 
which proved more absorbing than law practice, and 
which, because they centered themselves largely in Bos- 
ton, made that growing seaport the scene of exciting and 
now historic happenings. 

Flushed with victory but burdened with debt, the 
government of Great Britain insisted that, as America 
had benefited by the conquest of Canada, America 
should pay the bills. 

America had spent a good deal of her own money 
in the half century of war with France, but she was 
wiUing to help pay England's war bills if she might 
*' audit the accounts," and have something to say as to 
the raising and spending of the money, which, of course, 
could be obtained only in the shape of taxes or duties. 

But all this business England took into her own hands. 
The British government said the colonies had and could 
have nothing to say as to the method of raising and the 
manner of spending the money they must raise. " They 
must just pay and keep quiet," England declared, and at 
once set about arranging things so as successfully to 
" squeeze the colonies " for money. 

Of course she went at it in the wrong way. Half the 
trouble in the world has been caused by governments 



blundering into tyranny. The British government made 
all possible trouble by permitting a powerful English 
organization, known as the Board of Trade, to '' regulate 
colonial commerce." This meant burdening American 
commerce with excessive fines and dues ; it meant that 
the Board of Trade was to make England's colonies con- 
tribute to England's wealth, no matter at what hardship to 
the colonies ; or, in other words, as one historian has stated 
it, *' the Englishman in America was to be employed in 
making the fortune of the Englishman at home." 

But the Englishman in America had a mind of his 
own. It was one in which was fast growing a love of 
personal and political liberty that was only withheld 
from breaking out into action by the affection which the 
colonists held for the dear motherland across the sea — 
England, the home of those who had opened up Amer- 
ica. It was thus that two parties were formed in Amer- 
ica-fthose who believed in the supremacy of the crown, 
and those who believed in the supremacy of the people. 
^ There was one thing that the merchants of Massa- 
chusetts did do — they snapped their fingers at the 
Board of Trade and at the British government when told 
that they, the colonies, would be allowed to trade with 
England only ; they proceeded to do all the trading they 
could with England's other colonies, especially those in 
the West Indies. 

This nonsensical English law, by establishing what is 
called a ** prohibitory tariff," tried to prevent the New 
England merchants from buying their sugar and mo- 
lasses in the West Indies; and West India sugar and 
molasses were precisely what New England most needed, 



113 

and certainly intended to have without paying the heavy 
tariff or customhouse charges put upon them. This meant 
that they got much of the " sweetstuffs " into Boston 
and other Massachusetts ports without paying duties, 
whenever they could thus smuggle them in. 

Governor Bernard, whom the King of England had 
sent to govern Massachusetts, told the merchants of 
Massachusetts that they must stop this West India trade. 
But the merchants kept it up just the same. 

Then Governor Bernard joined hands with the cus- 
tomhouse officers in trying to stop this unlawful trade, 
and, as one means to the end, issued what were called 
writs of assistance. Now, a writ of assistance was a 
law paper duly signed and issued, authorizing the 
holder, as an officer of the king, to enter and search 
any house in which he supposed sugar or molasses had 
been hidden and to seize them as contraband, y If the 
king's officer could not do this alone the writ empow- 
ered him to call on the bystanders for assistance, and 
they were bound to help. 

This was allowable in England. But while it was 
good enough law, it was very poor policy, and it led to 
something much more important than sugar or molasses. 

James Otis, the boy from Cape Cod, had risen high 
in the law after he had became a Bostonian. He had 
been appointed king's advocate — what one would now 
call attorney-general of the province. 

As king's advocate it was his duty to apply to the 
court for writs of assistance when needed. But James 
Otis loved liberty and justice and political freedom too 
dearly to do anything, however lawful it might be, 

BROOKS'S BAY STA.— 8 



114 



that was a burden on the people, as the writs and the 
sugar duties really were. When, therefore, he found 
that the writs of assistance were to come from him 
he at once resigned his office as king's advocate, — and a 

good paying one it was, 
too. Then he took up the 
fight against the crown in 
defense of the Massachu- 
setts merchants who were 
trying to have the odious 
writs of assistance stopped. 
In the old Statehouse 
on Washington Street, at 
the head of State Street 
in Boston, you may see 
to-day the room in whicli 
James Otis, late the king's 
advocate, now the people's 
advocate, came from his 
home in Court Street to 
argue, before the superior court of Massachusetts, the 
cause of the people, and, doing so, made on a February 
day in 1761 an historic speech against issuing the writs 
of assistance. 

He failed, and yet he conquered. The chief justice, 
Thomas Hutchinson, — a descendant, by the way, of that 
same famous Mrs. Anne Hutchinson whom the ministers 
of the Bay colony drove into exile, — ruled against Otis, 
because the bewigged and robed chief justice was a 
king's man and had the law on his side. But James 
Otis's impassioned speech on that famous February day 




115 

was really a writ of assistance for liberty — something 
vastly more important than a hunt for smuggled sugar 
or hidden molasses. 

In that room in the old Statehouse, then known as 
the townhouse, there was a young man of twenty- 
five, who had come to town from a plain little Braintree 
farmhouse, still standing in what is now the city of 
Quincy. 

This young man's name was John Adams. He was 
no longer a farmer's boy. He had graduated from 
Harvard, and had just been admitted to the bar as a 
Worcester lawyer. He had come up to Boston and had 
followed the crowd that thronged the townhouse to 
hear what Mr. Otis might have to say about the writs 
of assistance. He heard enough to set his soul on fire 
and make a patriot of him. 

James Otis arose, and as he argued against the tyranny 
of those writs as not only unjust but as an invasion of 
the rights of the people, his feelings carried him away ; 
his voice rang out in bold and eloquent protest, ex- 
pressing the same defiance to kingly authority that, not 
long after, Patrick Henry gave in a similar case in Vir- 
ginia. 

" I am determined, sir, to my dying day," said James 
Otis, '' to oppose with all the powers and faculties God 
has given me all such instruments of slavery on the one 
hand and villainy on the other as this writ of assistance 
is. ... I oppose that kind of power the exercise of 
which, in former periods of English history, cost one 
king of England his head and another his throne." 

These were bold words for a British subject. They 



ii6 

made young John Adams open his eyes ; they thrilled 
him with the fervor of freedom„ 

But Otis went still further. He argued that the writs 
were tyranny ; that they were illegal ; and he laid down 
the astonishing doctrine that later had place in the very 
opening of the Declaration of Independence — that every 
man was an " independent sovereign," and that his right 
to life, liberty, and property ** were inherent and inalien- 
able," which ** no created being could rightfully contest." 
And as, in closing, he repeated his statement that the 
writs of assistance were ** unjust, oppressive, and im- 
practicable," he also declared that they never could be 
executed. 

*' If the King of England in person," he declared, 
** were encamped on Boston Common, at the head of 
twenty thousand men, with all his navy on our coast, he 
would not be able to execute these laws. They would 
be resisted or eluded." 

In short, as John Adams said of Otis many years 
after, recalling this remarkable scene, ** he reproached 
the nation, Parliament, and king with injustice, illiberal- 
ity, ingratitude, and oppression, in their conduct toward 
the people of this country, in a style of oratory that I 
never heard equaled in this or any other country." 

No wonder that the young man marveled as he listened 
or that the old man grew enthusiastic as he recalled the 
scene. That speech of James Otis's fell upon men's ears 
like the trumpet call of freedom. To young John 
Adams it was, so his grandson tells us, " like the oath 
of Hamilcar to the boy Hannibal." 

And old John Adams, in a flood of recollections, de- 



117 

clared " Otis was a flame of fire ; . . . with a prophetic 
glance into futurity and a rapid torrent of impetuous elo- 
quence, he hurried all before him. The seeds of patri- 
ots and heroes were then and there sowed. Every man 
appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up 
arms against writs of assistance. Then and there was 
the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbi- 
trary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child 
Independence was born. In fifteen years — that is, in 
1776 — he grew to manhood and declared himself free." 

A speech that stirs men to passion often works great 
harm ; but one that arouses the righteous indignation 
of men and leads them to think, to talk, and to protest 
is a prime mover toward great acts and greater results. 

Such a speech was that by James Otis. It made 
patriots ; and as men repeated the words to others, or 
themselves pondered over them, they felt that a new 
day was dawning for America, and that a crisis was at 
hand which each man in Massachusetts — and in all the 
colonies — must meet and face, to side either with king 
or with colonists, to yield to tyranny or manfully op- 
pose it. 



HOW THE OLD BAY COLONY LED 

THE VAN. 



THERE were many things happening or getting 
ready to happen, in the year 1761, in Boston and 
in the old Bay colony. 

That was the year in which news came that the young, 
slow-witted, good-hearted, pig-headed, and bumptious 
George HI. had become King of England and had de- 
clared that he would be king. That was the year in 
which brave, bold, impetuous, and fearless James Otis 
stood out as the people's champion and openly declared 
that " kings were made for the good of the people, and 
not the people for them." That was the 
year in which, so John Adams always in- 
sisted, the story of the American Revolu- 
tion began. That was the year in which 
this same John Adams's sturdy cousin 
Sam was declaiming against the evils of 
foreign masters and the tyrannies of kings. 
A most remarkably, outspoken, clear- 
headed, masterful man was Samuel 
Adams of Boston. 
Born in that quamt little sea town in 1722, he had no 
head for business, but a great one for organization. And 
from his earhest boyhood he was American and rebel. 

n8 




Samuel Adams. 



119 

In the year 1 740, when he was about eighteen years 
old, he took part in the commencement exercises at 
Harvard College and had this as the topic of his oration : 
" Is it lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the 
commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved?" 

'' Must assuredly it is right and lawful," the boy de- 
clared ; and he pleaded his case so earnestly and elo- 
quently that even aristocratic, king- worshiping Governor 
Shirley voted to give him his degree, while the college 
boys who applauded him said to one another, " Why, 
that Sam Adams is a regular rebel, isn't he? " 

He was indeed a rebel to anything like tyranny. 
When he saw that the English government was only 
interested in the colonies for what it could force from 
them for the personal profit of that motherland of 
England which he felt to be no true or devoted mother, 
bestirred up his fellow-citizens of Boston, of Massachu- 
setts, and of America to protest and to rebel. He urged 
the various town meetings of the Bay colony to assert 
their rights and demand recognition ; he drafted the 
protest against taxation without representation sent over 
the sea to England ; he advocated the first Continental 
Congress; he issued the circular letter which Massa- 
chusetts sent to the other colonies urging' unity of 
action ; he was fearless, sincere, unyielding, and abso- 
lutely incorruptible. He organized revolution. British 
gold could not bribe him ; British steel could not kill 
him ; he, more than any other man, led Massachusetts into 
rebellion and America into revolution ; and as the bronze 
tablet, set in the wall of the big building that stands 
on the site of his Boston home, assures the world, this 



20 



same Samuel Adams was, in truth, the " Father of the 
Revolution." 

If, as John Adams said, independence was born in 
the old townhouse when James Otis made his famous 
speech, it was rocked into health and strength in that 



Otis called the 
such men as 
the freedom 
buildings, still 



3a 




^ \ 



w 



;1|di¥l]l] 



-^ L 



ever famous Faneuil Hall, which 
** cradle of liberty," because there 
Samuel Adams nursed America into 
that made a mighty nation. Three 
standing in Boston, 
may rightly be re- %^ 
swarded as the pri- 1- 
mary schools of n_ 
revolution — the old 
Statehouse, Fan- 
euil Hall, and the 
Old South Meet- 
inghouse, in each 

of which Sam Adams, the leader of the people, spoke 
the ringing words that led to liberty. 

Under the inspiration of James Otis and the leadership 
of Samuel Adams things in the Old Bay colony began 
to look very bad for the king's cause. 

Parliament tried to raise money by taxes and re- 
strictions ; these the colony would neither pay nor per- 
mit. From criticism to protest, to refusal, to rebellion, 
the spirit of opposition passed, and at last the precepts 
that Samuel Adams preached, the people of Massachu- 
setts practiced, when opposition culminated in those two 
famous historic events, the Boston Massacre and the 
Boston Tea Party. 



m\ 



121 

The first of these disturbances came because the 
people of Boston objected to having soldiers, who were 
sent to force the colony into submission, thrust upon a 
free colony as unwelcome guests ; the second came be- 
cause the people of Massachusetts determined not to 
receive an article unjustly urged upon them to their own 
disadvantage. 

For the protection of the province, which the colo- 
nists neither desired nor required. King George pro- 
posed to garrison the town with his redcoats, and thus, 
under cover of protection, overawe the people into 
doing what he said they must. 

But the people had been free from these red-coated 
good-for-nothings too long to submit tamely to their 
presence. So the relations between soldiers and citi- 
zens became strained. The boys of the town, ever 
ready for a lark, and the lawless class, never friendly 
to uniformed authority, began to plague and pester the 
redcoats. The soldiers retaliated ; and one day on 
King (now State) Street, one of the garrison struck a 
boy, w4io, no doubt, had worried him into retaliation. 

It was the spark that set the tinder alight. The boy 
stirred up other boys ; the workingmen and the rest- 
less element joined forces ; and boys and men alike 
gathered about the gate of the main guardhouse, op- 
posite the south door of the townhouse (or old State- 
house, as we call it), and began to jeer at the soldiers 
as they passed between the guardhouse and their 
barracks. 

The soldiers threatened the crowd, and the crowd 
flung back taunts; the alarm bell began to ring; more 



122 

curious ones joined the crowd. One of the officers 
ordered the soldiers into the guardhouse and slammed 
the gate against the crowd. Only a sentinel remained 
outside. 

" That's the lobster that struck me! " cried a boy in 
the crowd, pointing at the sentinel and using the nick- 
name that the street boys gave the hated redcoats. It 
was the boy who had already got himself into trouble. 
" Why don't he take one of his size? He knocked me 
down with the butt end of his musket." 

"Ah, the coward! Pitch him over! Knock him 
down! " yelled the crowd. 

The sentinel drew back and began to load his gun. 

" Look out! he's going to fire," shouted the boy. 

** Don't you dare fire," young Henry Knox, a book- 
seller's clerk with a famous future before him, called 
out to the redcoat. '* If you do they'll kill you." 

'' I don't care," said the sentry. " If they touch me 
I'll shoot 'em." 

It was the evening of March 5, 1770. There was 
a little snow on the ground, and the boys began to 
snowball the sentry and call him names. Then some- 
thing harder than a snowball hit him. This made him 
angry, and may have scared him a bit, too, — one man 
alone against a crowd. 

''Help! Corporal of the guard! Help! They're 
hitting me!" he shouted. "Turn out! turn out! " 

The gates of the main guardhouse swung open, and 
a sergeant with seven men hurried out. 

"Prime and load! " the sergeant commanded, and 
the guns were loaded. 



123 

Then Captain Preston joined his men, and the eight 
soldiers with loaded muskets faced a howling mob of 
sixty or seventy men and boys. 

The boys made themselves very much in evidence. 
They danced and pranced in front of the soldiers, mock- 
ing and baiting them. 

''Yah, lobsters! " they cried. "Fire if you dare! 
You dar'sn't! " 

Then the men joined the boys in their dare. 

" Put down your guns, you cowards, and meet us 
even," they called out. " We're not afraid of you! " 

The soldiers lowered their bayonets for a charge ; 
the crowd swung their clubs ; Captain Preston, in a rage, 
sprang at the crowd and bade them be gone. 

*' Yah, lobsters! lobsters! bloody-backs! why don't 
you fire? Fire if you dare! " cried the mob, gathering 
about their self-constituted leader, Crispus Attucks, 
half Indian, half negro. 

" Send your men back, captain," shouted young 
Henry Knox. '' It will be worse for you if you don't." 

*' You let me alone. I know what I'm about," re- 
torted the angry captain. 

But evidently he did not. For in his excitement he 
either told his soldiers to shoot, or they thought he did, 
and suddenly, bang went a gun ! bang^ bang, went an- 
other and yet another, until the seven guns had all been 
fired and here and there in the mob men had fallen, 
dead or dying— Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray and 
James Caldwell, dead ; Samuel Maverick and James 
Carr, dying. 

The mob broke and scattered ; then as Captain Pres- 



1^4 




ton realized what he had done and drew his men within 
the guardhouse, the people surged back again, clamorous 
and excited. 

"Tear down the guardhouse! " they cried. ** Mur- 
derers! murderers! " they shouted. 

Alarm bells rang; the drums of the garrison beat to 
arms ; the town drums followed suit ; people and soldiers 
were equally excited. The streets were filled with a 
surging crowd. The Revolution had begun. " Oppo- 
site this spot," so runs a tablet set in the front of a 
granite building on the corner of State and Exchange 
streets, " the first blood of the Revolution was shed." 
And Boston always observed the 5th of March, the an- 
niversary of the Boston Massacre, until the 4th of July 
became the nation's anniversary day, after the close of 
the American Revolution. 

It was authority against lawlessness. It was the sol- 
diers against a mob. But the British authorities had 



125 

brought the trouble upon themselves. There was no 
cause for sending soldiers to Boston ; but they were 
sent ; and the lawful protests of the people ended at last 
in an unlawful mob, in riot and massacre, for which 
England alone was to blame. 

Again the people demanded the withdrawal of the 
troops. An indignation meeting was held in Faneuil 
Hall. Sam Adams, John Hancock, and a dozen other 
leading citizens went to the governor and demanded 
that the regiments be at once sent away from the town. 
Another indignation meeting was held in the Old South 
Meetinghouse. The governor promised to have one 
regiment withdrawn. 

"Both regiments or none!" Samuel Adams de- 
manded, and the crowd within and without the Old 
South echoed his cry. 

A committee of safety was formed ; the whole town 
turned out to the public funeral of the victims of the 
massacre ; Captain Preston and his soldiers were arrested 
and put on trial for murder. 

But Massachusetts never allowed passion to override 
justice. When the British captain was tried, John 
Adams and Josiah Quincy, leaders among the Massachu- 
setts patriots, appeared in court as his lawyers, so that 
justice might be done and the captain and his men have 
a fair trial. 

They did have one, and they were acquitted, although 
two of the soldiers were lightly punished for manslaugh- 
ter. For the trial showed that the mob had goaded on 
the soldiers to what they thought was self-defense ; and 
so the trouble, for the time, passed over. But the troops 



126 

were withdrawn, and King George, disgusted with the 
whole affair, always referred to those unlucky redcoats 
as *' Sam Adams's regiments." 

On the very day of the Boston Massacre the British 
Parliament insisted that the American colonies must 
pay the tax on tea. You know the trouble that fol- 
lowed, and how, when Sam Adams in the Old South 
Meetinghouse declared, '' This meeting can do nothing 
more to save the country," the hated taxed tea was 
swiftly dumped overboard from the ships in Boston 
harbor by patriotic ** Sons of liberty " dressed up as 
Indians; and how the first paragraph in the story of 
the American Revolution — the Boston Massacre, Mon- 
day, March 5, 17 70 — was followed by the second para- 
graph—the famous Boston Tea Party of Thursday, De- 
cember 16, 1773. 

Thus did Massachusetts reply to the stupidities and 
usurpations of the King of England. Thus did the Old 
Bay colony lead the van in the struggle for independ- 
ence, and thus did Samuel Adams, the man of the 
people, go down into history as the organizer of over- 
throw, — the " Father of the American Revolution." 



HOW MASSACHUSETTS BURST HER 
BONDS. 

ONE warm April morning, in the year 1775, Harri- 
son Gray Otis, aged nine, a nephew of that James 
Otis of whom I have told you, was 'Mate to school." 

" It was all the fault of the soldiers," he said; for, as 
he tried to cross Tremont Street so as to get into School 
Street, where was his schoolhouse, a corporal frightened 
the little fellow by turning him back with a gruff, " You 
can't get through here, young 'un. Go around through 
Court Street." 

Tremont Street was full of soldiers. They stretched 
from Scollay Square to the Common, and the Otis boy 
did not know what was on foot. He felt it must be 
something exciting, for the British redcoats in Boston 
had been kept ** on the jump " from various causes since, 
in the year before, eleven regiments of British soldiers, 
with artillery and marines, had been quartered in Boston 
to overawe the rebellious town. 

So the Otis boy had to go to school by the long way 
round ; and as he ran into the schoolhouse late, and 
just a bit frightened and excited over all the soldiers 
he had seen on Tremont Street, he heard his school- 
teacher say sharply and rather excitedly, too, I imagine, 
" Put away your books. War's begun ; school's done." 

127 



128 

The schoolmaster was right. War had begun, at 
last ; and Massachusetts had begun it. Month b}^ month 
the bonds had been drawn more tightly around the 
defiant colony. Enraged at the Boston Massacre and 
the Boston Tea Party, angered at Samuel Adams and 
John his cousin, at John Hancock and other determined 
and pugnacious Massachusetts men, the English minis- 
try had resolved to punish the refractory Bay colony, 
and proceeded by a decree called the Boston Port Bill 
to shut up the port of Boston to all trade until the town 
should repent and pay for the tea it had destroyed. 

But Boston was not in a repentant mood, and did not 
intend to pay for the tea. The colony supported the 
town in its refusal. The king sent General Thomas Gage, 
with a dozen regiments and warships, as military gov- 
ernor, to take charge of affairs, and Boston was in bonds. 

The whole country was aroused at this act of tyranny. 
"We must fight!" said Patrick Henry in Virginia. 
" There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. 
Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard on 
the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable — and let it 
come! I repeat it, sir, — let it come! 

Boston did not intend to permit her chains to clank 
unresisted ; Massachusetts refused to recognize the 
authority or the acts of General Gage. The towns 
about Boston made up a " relief fund " and sent it in 
to '* the distressed inhabitants of Boston." Salem and 
Marblehead, which, as seaports, might have profited 
by the closing of Boston and its loss of trade, loyally 
refused to do so, and offered to Boston merchants the 
free use of their wharfs and stores and warehouses. 



129 

The Great and General Court, in session at Salem in spite 
of Gage's orders, set itself up as the ruler of the colony 
and sent delegates to the proposed Continental Congress 
at Philadelphia. Gage retaliated by denouncing the 
Great and General Court as open and declared enemies 
of the king and Parliament, and endeavored to fasten 
the charges of treason upon such earnest workers for 
liberty as the two Adamses and Hancock and Warren. 

Toward .Samuel Adams and John Hancock the 
general was especially bitter. He called them rebels 
and traitors, and when orders came to him from Eng- 
land to arrest them for treason and send them to Lon- 
don for trial he hastened to obey. 

But Hancock- and Adams were not to be caught nap- 
ping. Hancock was made president of the Provincial 
Congress, into which the Great and General Court had 
resolved itself; Adams was earnest and unceasing in 
his efforts to urge the colonies to resistance. They 
kept clear of Boston, and on the i8th of April were 
both spending the night at the Hancock- Clark house in 
Lexington; still standing in that famous old town. 

Gage had word of this ; so he decided to capture them, 
and, at the same time, break into and destroy or bring 
away the military stores which the colony had gathered 
at Concord, eight miles beyond Lexington. 

It was not the first powder hunt upon which the 
British soldiers had been dispatched. Gage had sent 
wherever he heard that military stores were secreted 
by the people — to Marshfield and Jamaica Plain and 
Marblehead and Salem, and out to the present city of 
Somerville, where the ** old Powder House " still stands 

BROOKS'S BAY STA.— Q 



130 

in its verdant park, as a memorial of that first open act 
of war on the part of tlie British governor. 

So the redcoats whom the Otis boy had run against on 
his way to school on that memorable 19th of April were 
bound alike on a man hunt and a powder hunt. After 
his school had been thus quickly " let out," he watched 
the soldiers from where the Revere House now stands 
in Bowdoin Square as they paraded through to Washing- 
ton Street on their roundabout march to Cambridge. 

What the Otis boy did not then know, however, was 
that these especial troops were dispatched as reen- 
forcements to a smaller force which had already been 
sent in advance, in the dead of night, to march in secret 
to Lexington and Concord for the capture of the rebel 
leaders and the secreted stores. 

But, secretly as they had slipped away from town, 
the patriots had been on the watch and were ahead of 
them. That prince of patriots, Dr. Joseph Warren of 
Boston (he lived on the spot now occupied by the 
American House on Hanover Street), had word of the 
British movement by one of the secret *' patriot patrol," 
and gave warning by a signal lantern in Christ Church 
steeple to three swift riders across the river — Paul 
Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott. By 
three separate routes the fleet riders galloped through 
the night to warn the farmers of Middlesex of the Brit- 
ish design and to tell Hancock and Adams to be on 
their guard. 

You know what came of it all: 

" Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere." 



131 




Longfellow has told the story, but we hear little of the 
midnight ride of William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, 
though Prescott was the only one who made the com- 
plete ride and carried the warning through to Concord. 

The countryside was roused ; Hancock and Adams 
escaped capture ; the battles of Lexington and Concord 
followed, and all the world soon knew that Massachu- 
setts, on that 19th of April, 1775, had burst her bonds, 
and that speedily the thirteen colonies of North America 
would be in arms against the king. The " yeomanry 
of Middlesex " had lighted the way to liberty. 

The yeomanry of Middlesex, returning from their 
stern hunting of men on that famous retreat from Con- 
cord, at once turned the tables upon their persecutors, 
and stolidly encamped before Boston. 



132 

The fanners and fishermen of the other Massachu- 
setts counties joined their Middlesex neighbors, and 
speedily General Gage and his soldiers found them- 
selves securely shut up in Boston, besieged by fifteen 
thousand determined New Englanders. 

The general proceeded to fortif}^ the town carefully ; 
but he could get little or no help from outside, and he 
sent to England a hasty appeal for reenforcements. 
They came; but the colonies also sent on reenforce- 
ments to the men of Massachusetts. The Continental 
Congress at Philadelphia took matters in hand ; while 
Gage, who was as great a blunderhead as his master. 
King George, went to work to conciliate the colonies 
in the wrong way, for he issued a ridiculous proclama- 
tion, begging them to lay down their arms, and offering 
pardon to all but those terrible Massachusetts agita- 
tors, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. 

But before the formation of the continental army 
and the reenforcements from other colonies the New 
England volunteers and the Massachusetts minutemen 
once again showed their pluck and their fighting quali- 
ties. For, near Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, on the 
17th of June, 1775, three Massachusetts regiments, 
with two hundred Connecticut men and John Stark's 
New Hampshire volunteers, first threw up earthworks 
in a night and then defended them against thirty-five 
hundred picked and disciplined British troops, ably offi- 
cered and gallantly led. 

Thrice did the farmer boys and fisher lads of Massa- 
chusetts repul'se the red- coated veterans, -driving them 
back from the hay-stuffed rail fence and down the 



133 







t/ ' %i 



S4;0\ %\ \ 



;?• 



^%\ 



^ 



'\l^ 



bloody slope ; leaving the 
ground in retreat only 
when their ammunition 
gave out, and. then dis- 
puting possession with 
clubbed muskets, sticks, and stones until they slowly and 
stubbornly retired across the Neck to Cambridge. 

It was a defeat, but in effect it w^as a victory. For, 
as has been said, though the British won the battle of 
Bunker Hill, they lost the thirteen colonies. The bat- 
tle of Bunker Hill showed the spirit of the Americans 
and emphasized their certainty of resistance. It gave to 
the people of all the colonies hope, courage, and deter- 
mination, and when Washington learned that the men 
of Massachusetts, behind their frail earthworks, had really 
stood against the advance and the fire of the splendidly 
disciplined British regulars, he exclaimed thankfully, 
"Then the liberties of the country are safe." Bunker Hill 
has always been a glorious record for Massachusetts. 



134 



The colony was making a record for itself elsewhe;-e. 
The first Continental Congress, convened at Philadel- 
phia, had elected John Hancock of Massachusetts presi- 
dent. The man upon whose head the King of England 
had set a price as a traitor was made the chief one in the 
colonial councils, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia 
said, as he escorted Hancock to the president's chair, 
" Now Great Britain can see how much we care for her 
proscriptions." 

In the second Continental Congress John Adams of 
Massachusetts nominated George Washington of Vir- 
ginia as commander in chief of the American army. 
Thus were the North and South joined in a common 
cause ; the elevation of Hancock and Washington to the 
chief civil and military offices of the confederation drew 
the colonies closer together. Virginia and Massachu- 
setts headed the revolt against the crown ; they directed 
the congress and led the army. 

Massachusetts at Bunker Hill had shown the world 
that, rightly led, the American soldiers could win the 

cause of independence ; and 
George Washington assum- 
ing command of the conti- 
nental army at Cambridge 
was proof that the soldiers of 
liberty were to be rightly led. 
On Massachusetts soil, en- 
camped before her chief city, 
George Washington was first 
to make his mark as a great 
leader of men. For when, on 




Jti gtPl.^ -_^^- 



135 

the 3d of July, 1775, he took command of the continental 
army beneath the historic elm at Cambridge, still a cher- 
ished landmark, the siege of Boston had fairly begun. 

Massachusetts had burst her bonds. Under the 
leadership of George Washington her fighting men were 
to drive the forger of her fetters into the sea, defeated, 
outgeneraled, and outmaneuvered. 



HOW A MARBLEHEAD FISHERMAN MADE 
HIMSELF USEFUL. 

WHEN British soldiers fired upon American pro- 
testers in the streets of Boston, on the village 
green of Lexington, and at the old North Bridge at Con- 
cord, there was living midway between the tavern and 
the customhouse, in the quaint seaport town of Marble- 
head, a certain small-sized and large-hearted fisherman 
known as *' Cap'n John Glover." 

He was a Salem boy, born in the same 3^ear with 
George Washington — 1732; but he had moved to 
Marblehead as a lad, learned the shoemaker trade, and 
drifted at last into the more adventurous life of a fisher- 
man on the Banks. He married a Marblehead girl, 
settled down in the little seaport, and became so suc- 
cessful a skipper and dealer that when the Revolution 
broke out he was one of the solid and substantial busi- 
ness men of Marblehead. 

He was an energetic, go-ahead little man, independ- 
ent, as are all New England fishermen, and foremost 
among his neighbors in protecting the interests of the 
hardy sea town so picturesquely set upon the rock- 
bound shores of its curving, looplike harbor. 

When British aggression became unbearable to the 
patriots of Massachusetts, John Glover was outspoken 

136 



137 

in his protests and decisive in his action. He was one 
of the committee of grievances appointed by Marble- 
head, as by other Massachusetts towns, to correspond 
and compare notes with similar committees in the prov- 
ince, and signed his name to that inspiring Marblehead 
protest which declared that '' for the honor of our 
supreme Benefactor, for our own welfare and the wel- 
fare of posterity, we desire to use these blessings of 
liberty with thankfulness and prudence, and to defend 
them with intrepidity and steadfastness." 

When Lexington and Concord showed that war was 
inevitable, John Glover, who had been a militiaman in 
the Marblehead company since the French War, began 
without delay to recruit a regiment for the provincial 
service, and speedily reported that he had levied " ten 
companies, making in all four hundred and five men, 
inclusive of officers, armed with firelocks, and willing to 
serve in the army under him, all now at Marblehead." 

This was businesslike, as was everything John 
Glover did. The Provincial Congress so regarded it 
They accepted the services of the regiment, and the 
day before the battle of Bunker Hill duly commissioned 
Colonel John Glover as *' commanding the Twenty-first 
Regiment of Foot, in the service of the province of 
Massachusetts Bay." 

Four days after Bunker Hill, on the 2ist of June, 
I775> Colonel Glover received orders to march his 
regiment to Cambridge, where the provincial army of 
seventeen thousand men was encamped ; and as it 
marched out from Marblehead in its natty uniform of 
" blue round jacket and trousers, trimmed with leather 



138 

buttons," the old town was mightily proud of its '' ma- 
rine regiment," while as for Colonel Glover, every one 
declared that he was '* the most finely dressed officer 
of the army at Cambridge." 

This famous regiment of sailor-soldiers — for it was 
composed entirely of fishermen and seamen — was after- 
wards reorganized by Washington's orders as the Four- 
teenth Continental Regiment of Foot. It became one 
of the bravest, most celebrated, and most useful of all 
the continental regiments, and again and again saved 
the army in critical positions and secured the esteem 
and confidence of Washington. 

Men called it the amphibious regiment, because it 
was equally at home on land or water. One day a 
company would be assigned to sea service, to man a 
privateer or work a prize ; another day the same com- 
pany would be detailed as pioneers to bridge a stream 
or clear a tangled path. Did a fireship need to be 
piloted or a cruiser driven from some threatened port, 
an outpost protected in camp routine, or the cargo of 
a captured brigantine escorted into camp, one or more 
companies from ** Glover's Marblehead regiment," as 
it was usually called, were assigned to duty, and the 
commander in chief knew that the duty would be well 
and promptly done. 

In fact, Washington early appreciated the worth of 
this Massachusetts regiment and the energy and ability 
of its little commander. When, on his arrival at Cam- 
bridge, he began the reorganization of the continental 
army, he at once appointed Colonel Glover to superin- 
tend the equipment and manning of armed vessels for 



13^ 

the service of the colonies, while Glover's ability as an 
organizer and disciplinarian were of the greatest value 
to Washington in bringing the continental army into 
something Hke military efficiency. 

The forgotten heroes of a nation are as worthy of re- 
membrance as those whose names are not allowed to 
die. John Thomas and Artemas Ward and " dear old 
General Heath," with Porter of Danvers, Putnam of 
Rutland, Glover of Marblehead, and other Massachu- 
setts soldiers, were as earnest in the defense of the 
commonwealth and as able in the struggle for independ- 
ence as those other Massachusetts generals, Knox and 
Warren and Lincoln, whose names are imperishably as- 
sociated with our R^evolutionary story. 

It was upon those now forgotten heroes that Wash- 
ington leaned as upon right-hand men when he under- 
took the masterly and effective siege of Boston. It was 
General Artemas Ward who commanded the right wing 
of Washington's army and directed the work of fortify- 
ing Dorchester' Heights. It was General John Thomas 
who skillfully and completely checkmated the British 
move by his prompt and masterly engineering work on 
those same commanding heights of Dorchester. Yet 
both these men to-day are scarcely remembered, save 
as the little plot that holds the modest memorial at 
Dorchester Heights is called Thomas Park. Even 
** dear old General Heath," as Dr. Hale calls him, is but 
slightly remembered, though into his hands Washing- 
ton gave the possession and defense of Boston after 
its evacuation by .the British; while as for plucky John 
Glover, whose work at the siege of Boston won the ap- 



I40 

preciation and praise of Washington, he would be for- 
gotten altogether were it not for his later and more 
famous achievements as Washington's ever ready helper. 
The success of General Washington at the siege of Bos- 
ton was largely due to the energetic support of the 
Massachusetts men who surrounded him. 

When, on the 17th of March, 1776, because of the 
splendid efforts of Ward and Thomas on Dorchester 
Heights, the redcoats sailed away from Boston (just 
sixteen years after that protest against their being there 
at all — the Boston Massacre), they took with them into 
exile over a thousand Tories, and the old town at last 
was free. To-day, in the Public Library of Boston, 
may be seen the gold medal presented by Congress to 
Washington in commemoration of his first great success, 
and duly inscribed, " Hostibus primo Fugatis " and 
" Bostonium Recuperatum." 

Then Washington marched away with his victorious 
army to New York, and with him went Colonel John 
Glover, who, by the way, had first occupied the famous 
Craigie house in Cambridge, equally renowned to-day 
as Washington's headquarters and the home of Long- 
fellow. 

At New York, Glover's Marblehead men were con- 
stantly in demand. They drove the British ships away 
from their anchorage before Tarrytown, and through- 
out the Revolution were the first to volunteer in enter- 
prises of difficulty or danger. 

When the defeat on Long Island almost ruined the 
continental army it was Glover's men who manned the 
boats and through the fog and storm ferried the broken 



141 

army safely across from Brooklyn to New York, thus 
establishing the fame of Washington as a strategist. It 
was Massachusetts men who saved the army from de- 
struction. 

When the panic-stricken Americans fled before the 
British invasion of Manhattan Island at Kips Bay and 
roused Washington to one of his infrequent and justifi- 
able rages, it was Glover's Marblehead regiment that has- 
tened down from Harlem, turned back the flying troops, 
and saved the army from panic and rout. It was 
Glover's regiment that, in the enforced retreat from 
New York, saved the ammunition and stores of the 
continental army from capture and destruction. It 
was Glover's men who checked the British advance at 
Throgs Neck, received Washington's personal and official 
thanks for their bravery at Dobbs Ferry, saved the 
baggage and stores from capture at White Plains, and 
twice routed the British assault at Chatterton Hill. 

It was Glover's brigade — for the plucky little Mar- 
blehead colonel was promoted to the command of a 
brigade — that formed the rearguard of the continental 
army in that sorry but masterly retreat across New 
Jersey. And when the gloom of America was turned 
into joy by Washington's superb and desperate dash 
on the Hessians at Trenton, it was Glover's regiment 
of fishermen and sailors who poled the boats through 
the ice-swollen river on that terrible December night, 
and made the heroic crossing of the Delaware one of 
the most dramatic episodes in American history. It 
was Glover's brigade that charged pellmell into Tren- 
ton, and cut off the retreat of the demoralized Hessians 



142 




at the Assunpink bridge ; and one of the two bronze 
statues that guard the entrance to the beautiful battle 
monument at Trenton is that of one of the heroes of the 
day — a soldier of Glover's Marblehead regiment. 

Indeed, eight regiments of Massachusetts troops were 
in that heroic and historic fight, and, as one New Jersey 
man has well said, " Every memory of the victory at 
Trenton is linked with the names of Knox and Glover, 
and the statue of this warrior soldier from Marblehead 
is truly a most appropriate and fitting contribution from 
the great commonwealth of Massachusetts to a shaft 
which for ages will commemorate a success unparal- 
leled in our annals, a victory which made possible this 
great and powerful republic." 

The crossing of the Delaware made John Glover a 
brigadier-general, and gave him still more work to do. 
It was his brigade that held the borderland of the 
neutral ground at Peekskill ; transferred to reenforce 



143 

Schuyler at Saratoga, it bore a noble part in that phe- 
nomenal double battle and victory, where, charging with 
Arnold in his impetuous assault on the Hessians, Glover, 
at the head of his men, had three horses shot under him. 
He it was who, by his shrewd and unwearying watch- 
fulness, detected and frustrated Burgoyne's attempt to 
escape, and so bagged the whole British army. 

It was General Glover who, after the surrender, con- 
ducted Burgoyne and his men across Massachusetts, 
from Saratoga to Cambridge, and successfully *' cor- 
ralled " the captured army in its quarters upon the hills 
of Somerville ; and it was to General Glover that the 
courteous Burg03/me expressed his thanks as to a just 
and honorable captor and sentinel. 

Back again, under the eye of Washington, Glover 
and his men shared the hardships of Valley Forge ; 
they were dispatched under Sullivan to cooperate with 
the French allies in the exasperating and ineffectual 
operations in Rhode Island ; they defended Norwalk, 
Connecticut, against the British advance, and guarded 
the defenses of the Hudson at Peekskill and West Point 
in the trying winter of 1779. John Glover himself was 
one of that famous military court that tried and con- 
victed John Andre, and he was officer of the day, hav- 
ing in charge the execution of that unfortunate young 
man on the historic hillside at Tappan. 

So, from the siege of Boston to the surrender at York- 
town, John Glover and his Marblehead " webfeet " 
served through the American Revolution, reenlisting 
when their term of service expired. Faithful in camp 
and on march, now leading the advance, now covering 



144 

the retreat, they endeared themselves to Washington, 
and established themselves, for all time, in the admira- 
tion and esteem of the American people. 

But what these men did for liberty other Massachu- 
setts soldiers did also, as willingly and uncomplain- 
ingly. I have merely picked out John Glover and his 
Marblehead regiment as typical of the spirit that infused 
itself into the men of Massachusetts, whether fighting 
in the ranks, voting in the congress, or sacrificing and 
struggling at home in order that victory might be secured, 
and ** these united colonies" become "free and inde- 
pendent states." It is well to recall statistics, and to 
remember that in the prosecution of the war for inde- 
pendence Massachusetts was assessed the highest for 
war expenses — eight hundred and twenty thousand dol- 
lars — and furnished the largest number of men sent to 
the war by any colony — sixty-eight thousand in all. 

Massachusetts was the center of rebellion ; she was the 
backbone of revolution. On land and sea her sons were 
foremost in the strife for liberty, gallantly and vigorously 
carrying out the lessons they had learned from James 
Otis and Samuel Adams, from John Hancock and John 
Adams, from Joseph Warren and Elbridge Gerry, and 
from that greatest of her sons, transplanted from the 
Charles to the Schuylkill, the patriot philosopher Ben- 
jamin Franklin, with those other less famous but equally 
determined patriots of the Old Bay colony, who lighted 
the way and showed the path to revolution and inde- 
pendence. 



HOW DOROTHY HANCOCK KEPT OPEN 
HOUSE. 




WHEN Paul Revere galloped up to what is now 
known as the Hancock-Clark house in Lexing- 
ton, on a now famous night in April, 1775, a minuteman 
who was acting as sentry refused to admit him. 

"You mustn't make any noise," said the sentry; 

*' Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams are asleep in the house." 

"Noise!" cried Paul Revere, "noise, d' ye say? 

Well ! you'll have noise enough before long, I can tell 

you. Why, man, the regulars are coming!" 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — lO I45 



146 

Hancock was on his feet at once. He had recognized 
the rider's voice. 

" Hello! is that you, Revere? Come in. We're not 
afraid of you." 

And Revere entered with his news. 

It set every one astir. The bells of Lexington, by 
Hancock's order, began to ring the alarm. The minute- 
men flocked to the rendezvous at Buckman's tavern, 
and John Hancock, determined to join the farmers in 
their armed protest, spent the most of the night in 
cleaning his gun and sword and getting ready for the 
fight he felt certain would come with the dawn. 

There was another interested listener and talker in the 
Hancock-Clark house that night. She was a Boston 
girl, and her name was Dorothy Ouincy. In fact, it was 
because of her that John Hancock came so near to 
being trapped by the British. For Dorothy Ouincy 
was visiting there ; and Dorothy Ouincy was engaged 
to marry that successful Boston merchant and uncom-' 
promising Massachusetts patriot who, later, affixed his 
bold signature, as president of the Continental Congress, 
to the Declaration of Independence. 

John Hancock was, at last, persuaded out of the idea 
of personal opposition to the British aggressors on the 
green at Lexington. 

" You are too important a person just now to risk 
death or capture," his friends declared ; and, as John 
Hancock always did feel rather important, he yielded 
to their advice. He shpped from the house just in 
time to escape capture, and stood on a hilltop beside 
Sam Adams when that " Father of the Revolution," hear- 



147 

ing the guns of the Lexington fight, cried enthusiastically 
to Hancock, " What a glorious morning for America!" 

Dorothy Ouincy that very morning joined her lover in 
his flight, and, four months later, on the 28th of August, 
1775, the two were married in the town of Fairfield, 
Connecticut, to which place Hancock came from his 
duties as president of the congress, for the sole purpose 
of being married to his " dear Dolly," as he called her. 

Whereupon a New York newspaper of the day re- 
marked : " A brave Roman purchased a field in a cer- 
tain territory near Rome, which Hannibal was besieging, 
confident of success. Equal to the conduct of that illus- 
trious citizen was the marriage of the Honorable John 
Hancock, who,, with his amiable lady, has paid as great 
a compliment to American valor, and discovered equal 
patriotism, by marrying now, while all the colonies are 
as much convulsed as Rome when Hannibal was at her 
gates." 

Then they went to Philadelphia, where for two years 
Hancock remained as president of the congress. Mis- 
tress Dorothy was considerably younger than her fa- 
mous husband, but she proved an excellent helpmeet. 
She saw to it that his dignity was supported in a style 
befitting the president of the congress — and it must be 
confessed that John Hancock was most particular about 
that same dignity. ''King Hancock" was what some 
people nicknamed him, and they used to tell how he 
appeared in public "with all the panoply and state of 
an oriental prince ; " how he was attended by '* four 
servants dressed in superb livery, mounted on fine horses 
richly caparisoned, and escorted by fifty horsemen with 



148 

drawn sabers, the one half of whom precede and the 
other follow his carriage." 

Perhaps, for a leader of democracy, John Hancock, 
president of the Continental Congress, did think a good 
deal of himself. But he was an honorable patriot and 
a hard worker, and Dorothy, his wife, helped him in his 
congressional work at Philadelphia, as she also helped 
him in his big Boston mansion. 

She acted, sometimes, while he was at Philadelphia, 
quite as if she were his private secretary and confiden- 
tial clerk. She would pack up the military commis- 
sions that were to be sent to the officers appointed by 
congress to positions in its army ; she would neatly trim 
ofif the rough edges of the paper money issued by the 
congress as continental currency and signed by John 
Hancock as president ; and she would put the packages 
carefully in place in the saddlebags in which they were 
borne by swift riders to different points, to meet the 
bills of the government and pay the wages of the con- 
tinental troops. 

When they were at home again in Boston, in 1778, 
John Hancock and his wife Dorothy kept open house, 
in their fine mansion on Beacon Hill, for the friends of 
the colonies, domestic and foreign, American as well 
as French. 

Indeed, when the French allies came to Boston, the 
hospitable doors of the big house stood wide open for 
them, and Mistress Dorothy was kept very busy doing 
the honors as the wife of one of the chief citizens of 
Boston, the wealthiest "rebel" in Massachusetts, the 
man who was to be the first governor of the new Bay 



149 

State, and who even hoped to be president of the new 
American repubhc. 

So taxed was Mrs. Dorothy's hospitahty, indeed, that 
her poor cook was quite worn out with dinner-getting. 
At least three fat turkeys had to be killed every night 
for the guests of the next day, and a flock of one hun- 
dred and fifty of these " Thanksgiving birds " was shut 
up in the big coach house at night and turned out to 
feed, in the daytime, in the great pasture lot where now 
stands the Boston Statehouse with its gilded dome. 

But if Dorothy Hancock's cook was overtaxed by the 
open-handed hospitality of " rosy John," as some undig- 
nified neighbors had a way of referring to him, so, too, 
was Mrs. Dorothy herself sometimes put to her wits' 
end to keep up with her husband's abounding welcome. 

But she was a shrewd and level-headed young woman, 
and did not permit herself to become confused or '' put 
out," whatever happened. 

One day, in 1778, John Hancock told his wife that 
he had invited the Count d'Estaing and thirty officers 
of the French fleet to breakfast with them next day. 
Now, the Count d'Estaing was a gentleman who took 
the will for the deed, and then, in all courtesy, tacked 
on the deed itself. He read Mr. Hancock's invitation 
to include all his officers, and the midshipmen as well. 

So, next morning, the breakfast guests all came 
streaming up from the wharfs, oflf which the French 
fleet lay at anchor. They counted nearly two hundred 
in all, and were in such fine feathers that, as Mistress 
Dorothy said herself, in telling the story some years 
after, all Boston Common was " bedizened with lace." 



150 




But, before they reached the Hancock house, up 
came a messenger from the Honorable John, to tell 
Mrs. Dorothy of the "enlargement" of the invitation, 
and begging her to prepare breakfast for one hundred 
and twenty more than the original plan. 

She does not tell us what she said ; but she does tell 
us what she did. Evidently she was determined to 
maintain her own and her husband's reputation as to 
their ability to keep " open house." 

Even while the guests were in sight she set her serv- 
ants at work. They spread twelve pounds of butter 
on generous slices of the Hancock bread, while one of 
them hurried down to the officer of the guard on the 



151 

Common with Mrs. Hancock's compliments, and would 
lie be so kind as to bid his men milk all the cows that 
were grazing on the Common, and send the milk at once 
to Mrs. Hancock. 

The guard complied, the milk was secured, Mrs. 
Dorothy begged all procurable cake from her neighbors, 
stripped her garden of fruit, and the breakfast for two 
hundred was ready in time. 

The French officers evidently enjoyed the hasty, 
homemade banquet, for Mistress Dorothy herself is 
authority for the statement that one Frenchman alone 
drank seventeen cups of tea. 

As for those young scamps of midshipmen, they 
made a raid on the cake, captured it from the servants 
who were bringing it through the hall, and would have 
eaten it all had not Mistress Dorothy put them to rout, 
recaptured the cake, and, hiding it in napkin-covered 
buckets, saved it, with the fruit, as dessert at the break- 
fast. 

Mrs. Dorothy Hancock was as clever as she was capa- 
ble, and she had her revenge. For when the polite 
Count d'Estaing, desiring to return her hospitality, 
invited her to visit his fleet " with her friends," she 
appeared on the wharfs with a party of five hundred 
" to visit the count." 

But he was as cool as she, and fully equal to the joke. 
He transported " Mrs. Hancock and friends " to the 
fleet and entertained them there all day. Honors 
were about even, just then, in Boston. 

Mistress Dorothy had many opportunities, after this 
experience, to keep open house in the big mansion on 



152 

the hill — a noble old colonial house which stood on 
Beacon Street far into the memory of the Massachusetts 
of to-day ; for, in 1 780, the colony of Massachusetts 
Bay, which had claimed the right to be called a *' free 
and independent state," became one in fact, with a 
constitution and a governor, and that first governor of 
Massachusetts was John Hancock. 

Massachusetts was proud of " King Hancock," de- 
spite his pomposity and love of show. For, under- 
neath it all, he was true metal. When other men of 
means and station had deserted the people, he had stood 
firm, even to loss of property and risk of life itself. He 
was genial even if he was conceited, charitable even if 
peculiar, a true American even if an aristocrat, and 
level-headed even if a bit peppery of temper and over- 
weighted with a sense of his own importance. John 
Adams once got angry with him and called him " an 
empty barrel;" but John Adams, despite his greatness 
and his patriotism, had a sharp tongue, and often made 
unpleasant personal remarks. After all, even great men 
are but human, notwithstanding their loftiness of pur- 
pose and grandeur of soul. 

For ten years John Hancock served his state as gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, and served it well — from 1780 
to 1784, and again from 1787 to 1793, when, on the 
third day of October, he died. Governor Hancock still. 

To the last his hospitality was boundless, while Mrs. 
Dorothy Hancock was just suited to her high position 
as *' the governor's lady," and met her duties with dig- 
nity, ability, and ease. 

It was while Governor John Hancock was chief magis- 



153 

trate of the Bay State that Maine, so long a part of 
Massachusetts, sought to break away from the parent 
colony, and set up for a commonwealth **on her own 
hook." 

Piece by piece had Massachusetts been shorn of her 
extended territory. When, after her long fight with 
kings and parliaments for territorial rights and chartered 
privileges, the colony of Massachusetts Bay lost, in 1 691, 
its old-time independence and became an appendage to 
the crown of England under the title. of the '* Province 
of Massachusetts Bay," it was granted, as a salve to the 
wound made by the loss of its charter, additional and 
extensive territory ; for into it were merged the provinces 
of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Maine, Sagadahoc, and 
Acadia, — a region stretching from Long Island Sound 
to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Rhode Island to 
Newfoundland. New Hampshire, too, was a part of the 
Massachusetts Bay jurisdiction, as one might say, " off 
and on." For that land of the granite hills was attached to 
and detached from Massachusetts so often that a Ports- 
mouth man could scarcely tell to which colony he owed 
allegiance. Massachusetts, indeed, claimed the entire 
territory of New Hampshire under an old charter, and 
again and again, for a period of a hundred years, the 
matters of ownership or boundaries were unsettled, and 
New Hampshire was either a part or a protege of the 
Bay colony. 

Acadia, or what we know as New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia, was wrested from the French by New 
England, largely by Massachusetts fighters, in 17 10, 
although it had been made part of Massachusetts by 



154 ■ 

royal proclamation in 169 1. It was even harder than 
it is now for the two races — French and English — to 
live as comrades and neighbors under one flag. The 
Acadians were unruly and quarrelsome ; they impeded 
the progress of English ideas and methods ; and finally, 
as a military and political necessity, seemingly harsh 
but really imperative under the peculiar life of those 
days, the Acadians were removed from their lands in 
1755, and scattered among the English colonies from 
Massachusetts to Georgia. Mr. Longfellow's poem of 
" Evangeline " is beautiful and pathetic, but 5^ou must 
read the real story of the removal of the Acadians be- 
fore you accept his fine hexameters as history, and say 
" how dreadful " or " how cruel." 

But the years brought losses to Massachusetts, and, 
piece by piece, she was shorn of her territories. First, 
Acadia was torn away and made a crown colony; then 
New Hampshire, in 1740, set up for herself; and when 
the Revolution had brought independence to the colo- 
nies, Maine chafed under restraint and sought separation 
from Massachusetts. 

Separation did not come just then, however. For 
years the people were divided over the matter, and not 
until another war with Great Britain had been waged 
and won, and Maine, at the cost of a great slice of her 
territory yielded up to the British, established the right 
to settle her own affairs, was separation from Massachu- 
setts finally arranged in 1820, and the last dismember- 
ment of the old provincial territory of the Bay State 
made for the sake of others and the strengthening of the 
republic. And the move toward this final dismember- 



155 

ment began while Governor John Hancock was in 
office. 

Now, as "King Hancock" did not bear with ease 
anything that detracted from his dignity and importance, 
he did not look with favor upon anything that lessened 
the dignity and importance of the commonwealth of 
Massachusetts. So he objected to Maine's move toward 
a separate state making, just as he objected to a lower- 
ing of his independence in a certain interview that has 
become historic. 

For it was while Governor Hancock was in office 
that George Washington came to Boston, in the course 
of his Northern tour. It was the fall of 1789. 

He came as President of the United States. All 
people, high and low, turned out to welcome him — all 
except Governor. Hancock. For this occasion only his 
famous hospitality failed. 

It was a question of dignity. John Hancock was a 
believer in what is called the doctrine of States' rights. 
He held that Massachusetts was a sovereign State ; he 
claimed that the governor of Massachusetts was the 
equal in dignity and importance of the President of the 
United States, and that it was the President's duty to 
call upon him first. But George Washington was a 
FederaHst. He held that the Union was paramount, 
and that it was the duty of a governor to visit and 
welcome the President first. 

It is needless to say that the President did not visit 
the governor first. George Washington was always 
right as to both theory and practice. But there was a 
delay that exasperated the loyal citizens of Boston — 



156 




federalists and antifederalists alike. Governor Hancock 
speedily saw he was wrong, and, at last, he " made his 
manners" to the President, pleading his convenient and 
frequently present gout as his excuse for his one appar- 
ent lack of hospitality — the only one on record. 

At once Washington returned the governor's visit, 
and, so Mrs. Dorothy declares, was " very sociable and 
pleasant during the whole visit." As for dignified Mrs. 
Dorothy, you may be sure that with graciousness and 
ease she did the honors of Hancock house to her distin- 
guished guest. 



HOW CAPTAIN SHAYS MISSED HIS MARK. 

ON a bitter January day, In the year 1787, Captain 
Daniel Shays, at the head of eleven hundred 
determined men, marched into the town of Springfield. 

Like Governor Hancock, Captain Shays had an over- 
mastering sense of his own importance and ability ; like 
Governor Hancock, Captain Shays felt himself called 
upon to lead the people to liberty ; but, unlike Governor 
Hancock, Captain Shays had neither ability himself nor 
wisdom in his methods, and so, again unlike the gov- 
ernor, he missed his high mark and came to grief. But, 
for a time, he caused a mighty stir in Massachusetts, 
and the Bay State quivered with alarm when Captain 
Daniel Shays marched on Springfield. 

He came by the Boston road, — the Bay Path, — along 
which, one hundred and fifty years before him, William 
Pynchon had led to the same sightly spot, upon the banks 
of the noble Connecticut, an equally determined band. 

But those two expeditions were vastly diflferent. For 
William Pynchon came to upbuild, while Daniel Shays 
came to overthrow. 

During that century and a half Springfield had grown 
into a town of several hundred houses, which stretched 
eastward from the banks of the Connecticut along the 
Boston road. It was one of the most flourishing of the 

157 



158 

towns of central Massachusetts ; it was in the midst of 
a fertile farming section ; it was the county town, where 
the law courts held their sessions ; and, within its limits, 
the United States, during the Revolutionary War, had 
built an arsenal for the manufacture and storage of guns 
and mihtary stores. 

It was these latter that Captain Daniel Shays coveted, 
and was determined to have. For Captain Daniel Shays 
was the chief of the Regulators. 

Now the Regulators, as they called themselves, 
though other people called them rioters and rebels, w^ere 
made up of recruits from the ranks of the disaffected, 
overburdened, and debt-ridden farmers of Massachu- 
setts, from Middlesex County to the New York line. 

They proposed to regulate the affairs of the State 
to suit their own ideas and desires ; and their main de- 
sire was to overthrow the lawyers who could prosecute 
them ; to disperse and close up the courts that could 
punish them, and to make the course of justice run as 
they desired, not as the law decreed. 

It was the old story over again. Ignorance never 
attacks a wrong righteously. Disaffection growls at law 
and calls it injustice. Every mob hates a lawyer. 

" No tax, no serf, and the head of every lawyer in 
England! For not till they are killed will the land 
enjoy its old freedom again." That was the demand 
of the men of Kent and Essex, of Hertford and St. Al- 
bans, — ''broken men skilled in arms, landless men and 
sturdy beggars," as the old record calls them,— who, six 
hundred years ago, under their bold leader, faced a boy 
king of England in the days of Wat Tyler's rebellion. 



159 

'' Down with the taxes ! down with all lawyers ! stand 
for your homes! " was the cry of the discontented men 
of Hampshire and Middlesex, of Worcester and Berk- 
shire — many of them, like those of Wat Tyler's follow- 
ing, "landless and beggared," many of them "broken 
men skilled in arms " — in the days of Shays's rebellion in 
Massachusetts in 1786. 

It was because so many were " skilled in arms " that 
they were so bold in demanding what they called a 
redress of grievances. Many of them had fought bravely 
in the buff-and-blue ranks of the old continentals to 
force a redress of grievances from England and had 
won their country's independence. " What man has 
done, man may do again," they said; and forthwith 
they rushed to arms, unmindful of the fact that resist- 
ance to tyranny depends for the justice of its cause upon 
the distinction between a real and a fancied tyranny. 

It must be said for the Massachusetts Regulators of 
1786 that they, poor fellows, were too greatly imbit- 
tered by their sad condition to be able to discriminate. 
To them, the " tyranny " they had risen against seemed 
real enough; they called it, as do thoughtless men 
to-day, the tyranny of money and the curse of gold ; 
and yet it was no tyranny at the end of the eighteenth 
century any more than it is at the close of the nine- 
teenth ; for it was a condition of their own making, as 
it is of ours, and always will be so long as money con- 
trols the producing power. 

The Revolution had left the land burdened with debt. 
In Massachusetts alone the national, State, and private 
debts amounted to over fifteen millions of dollars, and 



i6o 

there were but ninety thousand voters and taxpayers 
in the State, the most of them poor men. 

Manufactures were small and weak; the Revolution 
had destroyed commerce and broken the fishing indus- 
try ; the producers of Massachusetts in 1 786 were largely 
farmers ; there was so little ready money that settle- 
ments were made in produce or in kind — in oats, pota- 
toes, fish or shoes, for instance. 

There were only a few rich men within the limits of 
the new State. Taxation was hard to bear ; but, when 
a man could not or would not pay his taxes, the law 
took him in hand and compelled him to pay, or seized 
upon his property for settlement. This is never gra- 
ciously accepted ; so the farmers of Massachusetts who 
had fought for freedom began, some of them, to dislike 
and defy the very laws they had made to guard their 
freedom. 

But people who are pinched for ready money do not 
stop to argue or reason. They jump at conclusions; 
they decide that the man to whom they are in debt and 
the man who tries to collect the debt from them are alike 
tyrants and should be resisted. The distressed farmers 
of Massachusetts, in the trying period just after the 
Revolution, concluded that things were not fairly distrib- 
uted in this world ; that distress would cease if a re- 
distribution were made ; and that therefore it was their 
right to take for those who had not from those who had. 

This, at least, was Daniel Shays's idea ; it was the idea 
of the half-dozen leaders who worked up the people of 
Massachusetts in i 786 to disaffection, rebellion, riot, anch 
war. And though some were honest enough, some 



i6i 

were demagogues who sought to stir up the old, old 
strife — masses against classes. 

From August, 1786, to February, 1787, rebellion was 
in the air. Before that cold January day on which 
Captain Shays marched upon Springfield, he and his 
lieutenants — most of them Revolutionary veterans — had 
carried on a campaign of bluster, threat, and menace. 
Men had gathered in arms at Northampton and Worces- 
ter, at Concord and Great Barrington, at Springfield and 
Groton. Judges had been overawed ; courts had been 
closed or prevented from sitting; the men of Worces- 
ter County had signed a new declaration of independ- 
ence ; the militia had sympathized or sided with the 
malcontents ; .the jail at Great Barrington had been 
emptied by a mob ; barns and haystacks had been 
fired ; blood had been spilled at Groton ; and as Cap- 
tain Daniel Shays saw four counties in revolt, and knew 
himself to be the head and front of the rebellion, no 
wonder that this simple ex- captain of continentals should 
have deemed himself a second Washington raised up to 
be a leader of the people. 

But Governor John Hancock had seen the storm brew- 
ing and had prudently given way to a successor, — Gov- 
ernor James Bowdoin, — not wishing to side against the 
people, even though he were a " king " of the aristocrats. 

Governor Bowdoin was prompt and firm. He too 
sympathized with the people, and headed a movement 
toward simple and economical living. But he would 
countenance nothing like rebellion, and when Captain 
Shays and his followers proceeded to deeds of violence, 
the governor acted at once. 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — 1 1 



1 62 

He issued a call for troops to suppress the insurrection. 
Forty-four hundred men gathered in camp at Roxbury, 
and, under the command of bluff old General Benjamin 
Lincoln, a successful Revolutionary fighter, marched, in 
the dead of winter, along William Pynchon's Bay Path 
to the relief of Springfield, the center of rebellion. 

Thus far the movements of the Regulators had been 
scattered, disjointed, and inefficient. General Shepard, 
another ** Revolutioner," with six hundred militia had 
held Springfield and protected the arsenal from plunder, 
but that was about all that had been done. The Regu- 
lators were growing more confident and determined, 
and their January march on Springfield was with a 
union of forces amounting to over two thousand men. 

All such movements, however, from Wat Tyler's day 
to those of the very latest agitators, lack union and 
real leadership. 

It was so in the case of Captain Daniel Shays. Other 
leaders of the insurrection considered themselves quite 
as great and important as he ; they refused to obey his 
orders or to follow out his plans ; and when he reached 
Springfield, on the 25th of January, his own eleven hun- 
dred men were all there was of his army. The other 
leaders acted as each thought best, not as he directed. 

But Shays's eleven hundred, each man wearing in his 
'/hat the sprig of evergreen that was the badge of rebel- 
Hon, marched boldly after their leader and prepared to 
storm the heights back of the town, where stood the 
arsenal, defended by General Shepard and a thousand 
men. 

Within three hundred and fifty yards of the arsenal 



i63 

the invaders halted and sent a summons of surrender. 
General Shepard bade them disperse, but they marched 
ahead^. 

Then he sent a flag of truce, and gave them his last 
warning. 

'* Step one foot beyond that line that I have marked," 
he said to Captain Shays, " and you do so at your peril. 
For, as sure as you do, I fire." 

'' Fire, if you dare ! " answered Shays. " We are here 
for that arsenal, and we'll have it." Then he wheeled 
about. " Forward, march! " he said to his men. 

Rebellion's lines advanced steadily. 

" Fire! " commanded General Shepard. And his 
men fired — into the air! 

It was the same mistake that is made at the outset of 
every riot, and one that always means greater trouble. 
General Shepard hated to fire into the ranks of men 
some of whom were old comrades of the buflf-and-blue. 
So he had told his men to. fire, if ordered, but to fire 
into the air. 

Stern measures are the only thing a mob respects; 
lenient measures they take for sympathy or timidity. 
Besides, there were among Shays's followers too many 
old soldiers of the Revolution to be frightened by an 
over-the-head volley. They marched on, unbroken and 
undismayed, ridiculing rather than fearing their oppo- 
nents. 

General Shepard saw that the Regulators meant 
business. He stiffened into the veteran at once. 

"Aim low! Fire! " he commanded a second time. 

Again the guns of the militia spoke, and with deadly 



164 




.m.^ 



effect. Four men fell dead or dying; others were 
wounded; the ranks recoiled; those unused to war 
cried '* Murder! " and " Butchers! " The ranks of re- 
belHon were in confusion, half of them in full flight. 

Captain Shays rode among his men, storming, com- 
manding, pleading; but it was of no avail. Disorgan- 
ized revolt always hovers on the edge of cowardice. The 
Regulators were in a panic ; one other shot scattered 
them, and, in full retreat, the eleven hundred never 
stopped until they were safe at Ludlow, ten miles 
away. 

Then Lincoln came on with his reenforcements, and 
Captain Shays withdrew to Pelham and Petersham. 



i65 

Lincoln pursued him, despite the cold and snow. 
In the midst of a blizzard his advance entered Peters- 
ham, on the morning of the 4th of February, with two 
cannon, and the main army five miles in the rear. 

Then fear fell upon the Regulators. Cold w^eather, 
and the law in the shape of a real army, defeated all 
Captain Shays's notable plans for supremacy and law- 
making and a newfangled code of justice. 

By a vigorous move his men at Petersham might have 
captured the frost-bitten advance of Lincoln's army and 
held it as security for treaty or compromise. But con- 
science, which, as Shakspere says, " does make cowards 
of us all," took all the conceit out of Captain Daniel 
Shays and all the pluck out of his little army of mal- 
contents. 

" It was against my intuition that I undertook this 
business," he cried complainingly. " Importunity was 
used which I could not well withstand. P'or God's 
sake, have matters settled peaceably. I heartily wish it 
was well over." 

Then, with the other leaders, he made quick time for 
safety over the Massachusetts border, and so he disap- 
pears from history, the victim of a lack of backbone, the 
man who might have been a hero and a leader but for 
want of nerve and of faith in the justice of the cause he 
had championed. 

The cry for redress grew fainter and the schemes 
for a rearrangement of society had come to naught. 
The State was saved from anarchy. Captain Shays 
had missed his mark, and his short-lived rebellion was 
at an end. 



HOW THEY MADE SAM ADAMS A 
FEDERALIST. 

ONCE upon a time four desperate adventurers went 
out from Massachusetts. To be sure, they ap- 
peared to be quiet, sober, dignified, and highly respect- 
able gentlemen, in the attractive and picturesque cos- 
tume of our great-great-grandfathers of the year 1774. 

But as they rode toward staid and conservative Phila- 
delphia, where a congress of the American colonies was 
to meet, they discovered that a most startling reputa- 
tion had preceded them ; for, as they approached the 
Quaker city by the Delaware, a party of the Philadel- 
phia " Sons of Liberty " came out to meet and greet 
them, but more especially to warn and caution them as 
to what they should do or say ; for, so the welcomers 
told them, they had been represented to the town which 
they were approaching as " four desperate adventurers, 
seeking to raise themselves by popularity, and having 
independence in view " — dangerous and unsafe men, 
simply because they were the delegates from Massa- 
chusetts, ** that hotbed of rebellion." 

These " four desperate adventurers " — political pirates 
and colonial cutthroats, as they were deemed — were 
Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Gushing, and 
Robert Treat Panie — learned, cultivated, gifted, and in- 

166 



i67 

fluential gentlemen, fearless and earnest patriots, the 
representatives of the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 
first American Congress. Of them Massachusetts was 
to make judges, governors, and presidents; three of 
them were to sign the Declaration of Independence, and 
all of them were to help guide the destinies of Massa- 
chusetts as she took her place in the new nation of the 
United States of America. 

Three of them were born in Boston, one in that part 
of the town of Braintree that is now called Ouincy. 

To-day, if you visit Quincy you may see a little, low- 
roofed, unpretentious farmhouse, honored by all 
Americans as the birthplace of that " desperate adven- 
turer " John Adams, the first of a long line of states- 
men, presidents, diplomats, and patriots, of whom 
Massachusetts and America may well be proud. 

But John Adams and his famous cousin Samuel were 
to see Massachusetts in much strain and stress in those 
early days of Statehood. 

It is an ill wind that blow^s nobody any good, and 
the threatening months of Shays's rebellion, though 
they shook the new State well-nigh to its foundations, 
disturbed it in all its relations, and made agitators of 
peace-loving citizens, did have a salutary effect on the 
State and the nation as well. 

Shays's rebellion seems, to-day, a small afTair; but it 
brought the people of Massachusetts face to face with 
the question : Shall we support our government with 
all its shortcomings, or side with restlessness and an- 
archy ? And they chose the side of law and order. 
Then, too, the strain of this upheaval led the people to 



1 68 

see that if such uprisings as this were possible, there must 
be some strong central government, able and author- 
ized to support the State governments and protect the 
integrity of the Union. Leaders and thinkers throughout 
all the thirteen States felt this; a Constitutional Con- 
vention followed, out of which came at last the Consti- 
tution of the United States and the formation of a 
permanent and controlling government — the republic 
of the United States of America ; and for this result 
Shays's rebellion was largely responsible. 

It was hard, however, to bring the several States to 
sink their own importance and place the controlling 
power in the hands of a central federal government. 
Prominent men, men who had been statesmen and 
patriots in the stir and stress of revolution, could not 
agree to the plans of Washington and Franklin, of 
Hamilton and Madison and John Adams. 

One of the chief of these objectors to a federal union 
was Sam Adams of Massachusetts — the organizer of 
revolution, the man who has been styled the " Father 
of America." 

Sturdy, uncompromising, and unyielding, this man of 
the people was unalterably opposed to anything that 
seemed like taking the power from the many and plac- 
ing it in the hands of the few. 

He opposed everything that looked like what is 
called a centralization of power. He objected to a 
general government vested with control, and to a Presi- 
dent armed with power. He objected to the depart- 
ments of government such as we know to-day — the 
secretaries of state, treasury, war, navy, etc He 



1 69 

wished the Union, if there must be a Union, governed by 
committees of Congress, as the colonies had been gov- 
erned during the Revolution ; and he was very certain 
that, to give men outside his State the power to say 
anything about the affairs of his State, would weaken 
and swallow the sovereign commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts. 

There were other people in America who thought as 
he did. There were many in Massachusetts who ar- 
dently followed his lead ; for Sam Adams, the " tribune 
of the yoemanry," as some loved to style him, was still 
the people's idol. 

But the lesson of Shays's rebellion had its effect 
upon the people of Massachusetts. Even Sam Adams 
had no good word for Captain Shays's midwinter 
madness. In fact, he was ready to suppress the rebel- 
lion by stern measures, and was one of the first to 
strengthen the hands of the prompt and fearless Gov- 
ernor Bowdoin, who put it down. 

But when, out of such threatening uncertainties of 
popular discontent and weakness came the Consti- 
tutional Convention at Philadelphia, and finally the 
Constitution itself, Sam Adams decided slowly. 

He was not, as too many unjustly believe to-day, an 
opponent of a Constitution ; he was simply against cer- 
tain things prescribed by the Constitution which was 
signed in Philadelphia. 

So when, in i 788, a State Convention met in Boston 
to decide whether or not Massachusetts would ratify — 
that is, agree to and adopt — the Constitution prepared 
byWashington and Franklin and Hamilton and their asso- 



I/O . 

ciates, as the controlling law of the land, Sam Adams 
and John Hancock, those fellow-patriots of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, were either openly or silently opposed 
to that great document. 

There were, however, in the State of Massachusetts, 
able, clear-headed, and determined men, who were 
agreed that the State should ratify the Constitution, 
Sam Adams and John Hancock to the contrary not- 
withstanding. They believed it to be the only salva- 
tion of the country, already imperiled by anarchy, and, 
being as shrewd as they were able and as politic as they 
were, determined, they set about to win over the Con- 
stitution's chief opponents, Adams and Hancock. 

What they could not effect by argument they deter- 
mined to bring about by strategy — by an appeal to the 
weak side of these two famous men. With Sam Adams 
this was a belief in the will of the people ; with John 
Hancock it was a belief in John Hancock himself. 

So Hancock's support was won by just a bit of a 
trick played upon his well-known vanity and his always 
convenient gout. But when it came to Sam Adams, 
who was neither susceptible to flattery nor swayed by 
personal desires, a different course was pursued. 

The friends of the Constitution prevailed upon Paul 
Revere, that historic rider of the Revolution, to get up 
a big mass meeting of mechanics and working people — 
the plain people in whom Sam Adams believed so im- 
plicitly — and make a noise over the new Constitution. 

The ratification meeting was held at the Green 
Dragon tavern in Boston ; resolutions favoring the Con- 
stitution were rushed through, and a committee, of 



171 




whom Paul Revere was one, was appointed to wait upon 
Samuel Adams and tell him what the people desired. 

The committee called at the modest house in Winter 
Street, and Revere presented the resolutions. 

** A meeting about the Constitution ? " exclaimed Sam 
Adams — ''a meeting of the people? Why, Mr. Re- 
vere — why was not I asked to attend the meeting? " 

" Oh, they are too apt to do as you say. We wanted 
to get the real voice of the people," replied Revere. 

Adams glanced over the resolutions. There was no 
mistaking their tone of approval of the Constitution. 

"Hm! " he said; ** who made up the meeting, Mr. 
Revere?" 



1/2 

" The mechanics of Boston, Mr. Adams," was the 
answer. 

" Well, tell me," said Adams, still holding the resolu- 
tions in his hand, " how many mechanics were at the 
Green Dragon when these resolutions were passed?" 

" More, sir," was the prompt reply, '* than the Green 
Dragon could hold." 

"And where were the rest of 'em, Mr. Revere?" 
queried the '' Father of the Revolution," who knew the 
mechanics of Boston even better than does a modern 
" walking delegate." 

''They were in the streets, sir," Rex^ere answered. 

"And how many were in the streets, Mr. Revere?" 
persisted Sam Adams. 

But Revere's reply was prompt and convincing. 

"Why, sir," he said, "more than there are stars in 
the sky." 

That settled it. With Paul Revere, comparison was 
emphasis ; but Sam Adams did not need an arithmetical 
comparison. He knew that the meeting was the voice 
of the people, and in that voice he was a firm believer. 

It was their will, he said, that Massachusetts ratify 
this Constitution, faulty as it was. Their will was his 
law% and he would vote to ratify. 

So he became, for the time being, a Federalist, or sup- 
porter of the Constitution, and, because of his advocacy, 
the end came at last. On the 6th of February, in the 
year 1788, the Massachusetts State Convention, as- 
sembled in the meetinghouse on Long Lane in Boston, 
decided, by a close vote of 187 to 1 67, that Massachusetts 
should ratify the Constitution of the United States. 



^/3 

Then the people shouted their approval. From the 
Berkshires to the sea, Massachusetts celebrated the 
event. 

Bells rang; bonfires blazed; cannons boomed. "The 
Boston people have lost their senses with joy," wrote 
General Henry Knox. 

And, as a memento of their joy, the street on which 
stood the meetinghouse in which the convention was 
held was no longer called Long Lane, but Federal 
Street ; and Federal Street it remains to this day. 



HOW MASSACHUSETTS LAUNCHED THE 
NEW ''MAYFLOWER." 

SIX years after George Washington saw the Hght 
in his father's rambling Virginia farmhouse beside 
the fair Potomac, there was born in the village of Sut- 
ton, in the heart of Massachusetts, a boy who was des- 
tined to be an efficient helper to Washington in the 
years to come, to be the founder of a great State, an 
earnest apostle of freedom, the promoter, if not the 
father, of the prosperity, progress, and dignity of the 
great Northwest. 

His name was Rufus Putnam. Israel Putnam, that 
stout old hero of the Revolution, was his cousin, but 
the guidance and the success of the Revolution were, 
it is claimed, more directly due to this simple farmer 
boy of Sutton than to the brave old wolf-fighter of 
Connecticut, the king-fighter of Bunker Hill and Long 
Island and New York. 

Self-taught and self-made, Rufus Putnam gained 
what Httle education he had by blacking the boots of 
the guests at the Sutton tavern of his hard-fisted step- 
father, spending the few pennies he thus earned in 
gunpowder, with which he killed partridges, and with 
the money earned by the sale of these game birds buy- 
ing for himself a primer and an arithmetic. These he 

J 74 



175 

studied by the light of the tavern fire, and, with this 
rudely acquired knowledge as a basis, learned to read 
and reason. 

He became a blacksmith's boy at Sutton; then he 
went to Brookfield as apprentice to a millwright ; and, 
still studying whenever he could make the time, taught 
himself arithmetic, geography, and history, until he be- 
came able to extend his knowledge to advanced mathe- 
matics and engineering; for which he had an especial 
taste. 

A big, six-foot country boy, strong and athletic, was 
young Rufus Putnam. Few could overcome him in a 
wrestling match, or " stump " him with a tough problem 
in mathematics. He fought in the French War when 
but nineteen, saved enough from his bounty money to 
buy him a farm, married, and settled in the town of 
Rutland in Worcester County ; and when the shot at 
Concord awoke Massachusetts to resistance and revolu- 
tion, he joined the hastily formed camp of the Ameri- 
cans at Cambridge as lieutenant colonel of the Worces- 
ter County regiment. 

Here he attracted the attention and won the respect 
of Washington. His engineering knowledge was called 
into speedy service, and he was selected to construct 
the defenses thrown up around Boston by the patriot 
army. 

Chief among these were the notable works con- 
structed, almost in a night, upon Dorchester Heights, 
commanding the beleaguered city ; and so well were 
they constructed by this self-taught, unskilled engineer 
that Howe in dismay retired from his now unsafe 



176 

position, and the first actual victory of the Revolution 
was rendered possible by the energy and genius of the 
unscientific but practical farmer of Rutland. 

It was Putnam, also, who planned and executed the 
defenses of Providence and Newport, and the greater 
and more surprising fortification of West Point, that 
most important post of the American defenders of the 
Hudson, which prevented the separation of New Eng- 
land from the rest of the country, — a scheme desired by 
the British ministry, and tried, only to end in failure, by 
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton. Of this self-taught 
Massachusetts farmer Washington declared that he was 
the ablest engineer officer of the war, whether Ameri- 
can or Frenchman. 

With the close of the Revolution Putnam returned to 
his farm, and became a useful and honored citizen of 
Rutland. He was sent as representative to the Great 
and General Court; he served his town as selectman, 
constable, and tax-collector; he was made a State sur- 
veyor, and a commissioner to the Maine Indians, and 
when the popular protest against authority developed 
into the worry of Shays's rebellion, the former conti- 
nental general shouldered his musket and marched away 
as a volunteer. 

But Rufus Putnam appreciated both the hardships and 
the needs of the people ; and when the talk about the 
public lands in the Ohio country began to attract pub- 
lic attention, he saw in the great domain a field for 
settlement, development, and successful labor, while at 
the same time he recognized that the only way to 
occupy and improve those fertile Western lands prop- 



177 

erly was by systematic colonization rather than by 
individual and unorganized attempts at settlements. 

So Rufus Putnam " planned and matured the scheme 
of the Ohio Company," and through the years from 
1783 to 1788 strove persistently to interest his coun- 
trymen in his idea of territorial development, and to 
enlist them in the founding of a new State beyond the 
Alleghanies. 

Putnam had been one of the first to urge upon Con- 
gress, too poor to pay in money, the apportionment of 
certain sections of the public lands as payment to the 
soldiers of the Revolution for their services in the war 
just closed. He had prepared and headed a petition, 
signed by two hundred and eighty-eight officers, asking 
for a tract of land in the Ohio country " of such extent, 
quality, and situation as may induce Congress to assign 
and mark it out as a tract or territory suitable to form 
a distinct colony of the United States, in time to be 
admitted as one of the Confederated States of America." 

This petition was forwarded to Washington by 
Putnam, and with it the wise engineer sent a letter 
suggesting a plan of national defenses and fortifica- 
tions that would, if then begun by Congress, have 
committed the republic to such a systematic preparation 
for defense and war in days of peace as would have 
saved the outlay in blood and treasure which the neg- 
lect to accept Putnam's plans has cost the nation. 

Washington eagerly supported Putnam's petition ; 

other Massachusetts men became interested in and 

identified with it; but, as Congress delayed as usual, 

Putnam and some of his associates themselves " took 

Brooks's b.\y sta. — 12 



178 

the initiative," and planned for the purchase of the 
Ohio land by an association to be known as the Ohio 
Company. 

This company was made up almost entirely of Mas- 
sachusetts men. Planned in the old Putnam farm- 
house at Rutland, it was duly agreed upon and incor- 
porated in Boston, when, on the ist of March, 1786, in 
the famous *' Bunch of Grapes " tavern, at the corner of 
Kilby and State streets, delegates from the various 
counties of the Old Bay State met to discuss and sign 
the articles of association. Rufus Putnam and Manas- 
sah Cutler, Timothy Pickering and Benjamin Tupper, 
Samuel Parsons and Fisher Ames, Rufus King and 
Jonathan Meigs and Nathan Dane, — these were a few of 
the Massachusetts men who pushed forward to organi- 
zation and completion the settlement of the new lands 
on the Ohio, and helped to found what has since devel- 
oped into the great and powerful Western States of the 
American Union. 

The leading figures, however, in this vast enterprise, 
so fraught with good for their native land, were Rufus 
Putnam of Rutland and Manassah Cutler of Ipswich. 
They formed the plans, laid the foundations, and organ- 
ized the active measures that led to the settlement of 
Ohio and the West; they carried through the cession 
and purchase of land, secured the passage of an ordi- 
nance for the government of the territory, and drew up 
and fought through to adoption that most marvelous of 
public measures, known as the "Ordinance of 1787," — a 
form of constitution for the new colonies of the Union 
which saved the republic from becoming a great slave- 



1/9 



holding empire, and turned, as Senator Hoar expresses it, 
*' the mighty stream and current of empire from the 
channel of slavery into the channel of freedom, there to 
flow forever and forever," 

While Manassah Cutler pushed through Congress 
this foundation of an empire, Rufus Putnam, in his 
Massachusetts home, was organizing the emigration. 
The first party of colonists was finally gathered, and, 
leaving Danvers in December, 1787, was later joined 
at Pittsburg by a second party of pioneers. There, 
embarking on a flatboat, or galley, especially built for 




y^U 




this enterprise and appropri- 
ately christened the Mayflower, they pushed out into 
the Ohio on the 2d of April, 1788, and five days later, 
on the 7th of April, 1788, landed, forty-eight in all, at 
the place selected for settlement, to which they gave 
the name of Marietta. 

The leader of this first expedition for settlement was 
General Rufus Putnam, and his Mayfloiuer, of which he 



i8o 

was captain, launched by Massachusetts men in the 
interests of liberty, union, and progress, was properly 
named; for the men of Massachusetts were, in their 
turn, following the traditions of their fathers of that first 
Mayflower compact, sailing westward to plant in the 
almost unknown wilderness a colony founded on liberty, 
equality, and the rights of man. 

The old house in the village of Sutton in which 
Rufus Putnam was born has long since been destroyed ; 
but the house at Rutland, in which his active life was 
passed, where he dreamed over and practically devel- 
oped the scheme that led to the colonization and de- 
velopment of the great and free Northwest, in which he 
devised the plan that should exclude slavery forever 
from his new State, and which later found expression in 
the immortal *' Ordinance of 1787," still stands amid its 
elms and flowers, backed by its rampart of lofty hills, 
in the pleasant village of Rutland ; and upon the front 
of the house, to the right of the entrance, those who 
honored the name and memory of one who so notably 
advanced the greatness and glory of the republic have 
placed a bronze tablet with this inscription: 

'' Here from 1781 to 1788 dwelt General Rufus Put- 
nam : Soldier of the Old French War. Engineer of the 
Works which compelled the British Army to evacuate 
Boston and of the Fortifications of West Point. Founder 
and Father of Ohio. In this House He planned and 
matured the Scheme of the Ohio Company, and from it 
issued the Call for the Convention which led to its 
Organization. Over this Threshold He went to lead 
the Company which settled Marietta, April 7, 1788. Tq 



i8i 




Him, under God, it is owing thtit the great Northwest 
Territory was dedicated forever to Freedom, Education, 
and ReHgion, and that the United States of America is 
not now a great Slaveholding Empire. Placed by the 
Massachusetts Society Sons of the Revolution." 

Thus from those hill regions of Massachusetts where 
Rutland stands, amid its companion villages of Paxton 
and Princeton and Oakham and Hubbardston, the 
exact geographical center of the commonwealth, went 
out the man who, with kindred spirits of the Old Bay 
State's bone and blood, infused into a great movement 
the very breath of life and achievement. Thus Massa- 
chusetts played the controlling part in the great West- 
ern movement from which came that steady growth 
which, by successive stages, evolved the States of Ohio, 



I82 

Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon, and gave so 
lavishly of her life and sinew that there is to-day more 
real New England blood beyond the AUeghanies than 
along the Atlantic coast line. Thus she helped to de- 
velop the republic from the little colonial strip that 
edged the Atlantic to the great nation that stretches 
across the continent. For Rutland in Massachusetts 
was the cradle of the West, and when Rufus Putnam 
launched the second Mayflower he started the republic 
on its far-reaching career of possession, prosperity, and 
power. 



HOW THE CODFISH .CAME TO THE STATE- 
HOUSE. 

WHEN Captain John Smith, the "discoverer" of 
Pocahontas and " Admiral of New England," 
first sailed into Massachusetts waters, he came a-fishing, 
and had such good luck that he returned to England with 
a fare of forty thousand cod, — whereupon he told the 
usual *' fish stojy," for he declared he had caught sixty 
thousand. 

The fame of those fishing grounds spread so quickly 
that soon after, as Captain Smith himself records, 
" thirty or forty sail went yearly into those waters to 
trade and fish." 

For generations the codfishery of the New England 
waters had been known to the hardy sea folk of west- 
ern Europe. It was the codfishery of the Massachu- 
setts bays and banks that drew the attention and deter- 
mined the settlement of the Pilgrims of Plymouth ; it 
was the fishermen of Cape Ann who saved those same 
Plymouth Pilgrims from starvation; and the monopoly 
of the codfishery of Massachusetts was the object of the 
English syndicate from which grew the Massachusetts 
Company and the settlement of Boston. 

Within ten years after the beginnings of Boston her 
merchants were sending across the sea to England 

183 



i84 

annually three hundred thousand dried codfish ; and so 
prominent a factor was the codfish in the growth and 
development of early Massachusetts that, in the year 
1639, the General Court exempted from taxation "all 
estates " engaged in the fish business, and excused from 
militia duty all fishermen and shipbuilders. 

The fishing fleets of Gloucester and Salem and Mar- 
blehead, of Boston and Barnstable and Falmouth, laid 
the basis for the money-making commerce of Massachu- 
setts, while, at the beginning of the Revolution, Nan- 
tucket alone had a fishing fleet of one hundred and fifty 
sail, with twenty-five hundred seamen, and contributed 
each year to the wealth of Massachusetts eight hun- 
dred thousand dollars. 

From all this it is easy to understand why the fish- 
eries were called the "gold mines of Massachusetts." 
And as men will risk all for that which brings them 
their living and their profit, it was for their fishing 
rights and their fishing trade that the men of Massa- 
chusetts were ever ready to struggle in politics, or, if 
need be, to fight in war. 

It was the fishing rights of Massachusetts that very 
nearly wrecked the treaty of peace with Great Britain ; 
and only the stubborn persistence of Samuel Adams at 
home and the set determination of John Adams abroad 
saved the fisheries of Massachusetts from sacrifice by the 
other States in Congress, or from destruction by the treaty- 
makers at Paris. In any battle for right Sam Adams 
and John, his cousin, could always be found in the van. 

In those same revolutionary days there lived in Bos- 
ton an enterprising merchant and shipowner whose name 



i85 

was John Rowe. His memory lives in " Rowe's Wharf," 
familiar to all eastern Massachusetts as one of Boston's 
landmarks; but his memory deserves to live as that of 
one who proved himself, so we are assured, " as true a 
friend to his country as any whose names have reached 
a greater renown," 

He was part owner in one of the objectionable ships 
upon which was brought to Boston the taxed tea that 
raised such a tempest. But in a fight for principle no 
thought of personal gain or loss moved John Rowe. 

He made a speech in the Old South Meetinghouse, 
when all Boston went wild with excitement, one memo- 
rable December day in the year 1773. Seven thou- 
sand men were in and about that historic meetinghouse, 
clamoring against tea and taxes, while Sam Adams ex- 
horted them to stand firm but be moderate. 

And in his " Old South " speech John Rowe said sig- 
nificantly : "Who knows how tea will mix with salt 
water? " 

There was great applause. Many of his hearers caught 
the hint ; they knew what he meant, and at six o'clock in 
the evening of that sixteenth day of December, 1773, 
certain " Sons of Liberty," thinly disguised as Mo- 
hawks, rushed down to Griffin's Wharf, and tossed 
overboard from the ships the hated tea, quickly answer- 
ing John Rowe's bold question, though at his own ex- 
pense. But for this loss he cared not. The story has 
it that he himself was one of the " Indians," but this 
is not certain. At any rate, his loss was liberty's gain. 
That tea, at least, was so well salted that its memory is 
preserved for all time. 



1 86 




How the fishermen of Massachusetts proved them- 
selves on the battlefields of the Revolution you have 
read in the story of John Glover and his men. Their 
training for this test of courage was undisputed. Even 
in the Parliament of England, that great orator Edmund 
Burke, seeking to prevent war with the colonies, had 
pictured the hardihood and bravery of the fishermen of 
Massachusetts. 

" No sea," he said, ** but is vexed with their fisheries, 
no cHmate that is not witness to their toils. Neither 
the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, 
nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enter- 
prise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy 
industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by 



i87 

this recent people, — a people who are still, as it were, 
but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone 
of manhood." 

They were to " harden into the bone of manhood " by 
the sacrifice of revolution and the harsh shock of war. 
We know now how the fishermen and farmers of Mas- 
sachusetts precipitated the Revolution on the fields of 
Middlesex and at the battle of Bunker Hill. 

And when victory at last came, when the independence 
of America was won, and, in the year 1784, across the 
seas in Paris, brave John Adams, in the teeth of British 
opposition and French indifference, saved the fisheries 
of Massachusetts for the people of Massachusetts, to 
whom they meant so much, — then it was that John 
Rowe rose in his place in the Great and General Court, 
of which he was a member, and moved that " leave might 
be given to hang up the representation of a codfish in 
the room where the House sits, as a memorial of the 
importance of the codfishery to the welfare of the 
commonwealth;" and *' leave " was unanimously given. 

Then Captain John Welch, of the Ancient and Hon- 
orable Artillery, carved out of a solid block of wood 
a great codfish, four feet and eleven inches long, — 
big enough even to satisfy Captain John Smith's fish 
stories. And when it was painted it was duly sus- 
pended in the representatives' chamber in the State- 
house at the head of State Street, and John Rowe paid 
the bill. 

So the codfish came to the Statehouse of Massa- 
chusetts, and in the Statehouse it has staid to this day, 
suspended either above or facing the Speaker's chair. 



1 88 



When, in i 798, the Great and General Court removed 
from the old Statehouse on State Street to the new 
Statehouse on Beacon Hill, the codfish went too. And 
when, after ninety-seven years, the demand came for 
more room, and the representatives moved into a stately 
apartment in the enlarged and renovated Statehouse, 
the codfish, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, was borne 




to the new chamber, where it hangs in an honored place 
opposite the Speaker's chair and between the embla- 
zoned names of Massachusetts's greatest historians, — 
Motley and Parkman. 

Humble and homely though it may be, that simple, 
democratic codfish is an emblem of Massachusetts 
bravery, endurance, and skill. Nothing about the grand 



i89 

Statehouse on the hill Is more interesting, nothing Is 
more suggestive. 

'* It tells," so said the grandson of that stout-hearted 
John Adams who won the victory of the codfish in the 
court of France, '* of commerce, war, diplomacy, — of 
victories won by Massachusetts in all three fields. It 
symbolizes the sources of our original wealth, the nur- 
sery of those mariners who manned the gun decks of 
our frigates, our issues and struggles with England." 

Into the second of these struggles with England did 
the "followers of the codfish" sail to victory in the 
War of 1812. 

To that leaderless war with Great Britain Massachu- 
setts was determinedly opposed. It meant destruction 
of her commerce, stagnation of her industries, privation 
for her people. The fisheries were abandoned ; the 
farmers and mechanics felt the tightening pressure of 
the cruel embargo that closed their ports and held their 
ships rotting at their wharfs. Massachusetts cried out 
bitterly, and some hot-heads would have turned protest 
into secession; but the wisdom of leaders and the com- 
mon sense of the people prevailed, and Massachusetts 
remained loyal and patriotic, though stricken and de- 
fenseless. 

But in that war Massachusetts, despite her disap- 
proval, bore a noble part. Her sons were in many a 
land battle ; her sailors were in every sea fight ; her 
privateers wrought woe and destruction on the foe. 
The port of Salem alone sent out forty of these wasps 
of the ocean to sting and wound. 

From the port of Boston sailed the glorious Consti- 



I90 

tution — "Old Ironsides" — to her victory over the 
Gucrrierc. From Boston, too, sailed the brave Law- 
rence in the Chesapeake, to an honorable defeat and 




a glorious death almost within sight of Boston ; and 
though the harbor was blockaded by British cruisers, 
yet American vessels, manned by American blue-jackets, 
passed in and out, in open defiance of the foe. From 
Massachusetts ports frigates and sloops of war, brigs 
and privateers, went bowling out, to display that prow- 
ess on the seas which has ever been the chief glory 
of the otherwise disastrous War of 1812. 



191 

For these victories the knights of the cod Hne and the 
trawl have the highest honor ; and as a reminder of 
their dauntless courage and glorious achievements, still 
in its place in the Statehouse on the hill swings the 
monster codfish, emblem of the bravery, patriotism, 
persistence, sacrifice, energy, and skill of the fishermen 
of Massachusetts. 



HOW THE "FARMER OF MARSHFIELD" 
SAVED THE UNION. 

ONE memorable day in the year 1788, — the year in 
which Massachusetts ratified the Constitution, — a 
small boy of six, in the little New Hampshire village of 
Salisbury, made an important purchase. It was a cheap 
pocket handkerchief, upon which was printed, as was 
one of the customs years ago, the Constitution of the 
United States. And that small boy of six read and 
re-read that Constitution on his handkerchief until he 
knew it by heart. 

Forty-two years later, in the Capitol at Washington, 
a very grand and impressive-looking man — the senator 
from Massachusetts — delivered a speech about the Con- 
stitution that electrified the world, made his name 
famous, and saved the Union. 

That small boy and that masterly man were one and 
the same person. His name was Daniel Webster; and 
from the purchase of that decorated handkerchief came, 
in time, the salvation of the Union. 

For " Webster's boy," as every one in Salisbury called 
young Daniel Webster, had early learned to study and 
to revere the Constitution that kept unbroken the Union 
which was dearer to him than Hfe. And when, in 1830, 
the clouds gathered, and the action of South Carolina 

192 



193 



threatened to weaken the Union or throw the States into 
civil war, when men were uncertain how far the Consti- 
tution might permit resistance to the central authority, 
or how sternly it could compel obedience to the will of 
the republic, then Daniel Webster spoke. 

On the morning of the 26th of January, 1830, 
Mr. Bell of New Hampshire came to him, and said : " It 
is a critical moment, and it is time, it is high time, that 
the people of this country should know what this Con- 
stitution is." 

" Then, sir," said Mr. Webster, " if that is so, by the 
blessing of Heaven, they shall learn this day, before the 
sun goes down, what I understand it to be." 

That very day, in the Senate chamber in the Capitol, 
Daniel Webster told the people of the United States, in 
words the people have never forgotten, how 
the Constitution, which had made a we 
American Confederacy into a nation of 
freemen, denied the right of revolution, 
secession, or disunion. That 
Constitution, he said, created 
an indivisible union ; and his as- 
sertion, so grandly stated, gained 
strength with time, became the 
favorite declamation of Ameri- 
can schoolboys, burned its way 
into the very heart and soul of all 
true Americans, inspired loyalty and 
created patriotism, and, thirty years 
after, when agreaterdanger came, a second time did Web- 
ster's words save the Union from disruption and overthrow. 




Daniel Webster. 



BROOKS'S BAY STA. 



13 



194 

Daniel Webster was a child of New Hampshire, it- 
sielf a child of Massachusetts. For, though its union 
with Massachusetts was broken in 1680, when it was 
declared a separate province with a governor of its own, 
New Hampshire always leaned heavily on the Old Bay 
colony, whose men had settled it and whose soldiers 
had defended it, and again and again it petitioned for 
union with Massachusetts, — that union which did not 
come until, as one of the thirteen colonies, New Hamp- 
shire boldly cast in its lot with Massachusetts, the 
organizer of revolution, of independence, and of union. 

It was even so with Daniel Webster. For, although 
he made his reputation first as a New Hampshire law- 
yer, he achieved fame as a Massachusetts man. Re- 
moving from Portsmouth in June, 18 16, he became a 
citizen of Boston ; and the old city honors the memory 
of America's greatest orator and statesman by marking 
with a tablet the building now standing on the site of 
Daniel Webster's home, while in Marshfield, in " the 
old colony," the broad acres of marsh and farmland 
within sound of the restless sea are still visited by pa- 
triotic pilgrims who seek the home of Webster. 

For that two thousand acre farm in the village of 
Marshfield was counted by the great American as really 
his home. He delighted to be known as the " farmer 
of Marshfield," and even in the most engrossing political 
moves and successes of his eventful life his heart would 
turn toward his dearly loved seaside farm, with its broad 
fields and sturdy trees, its live stock and its crops, its 
strong, health-giving air, and the unending, inspiring rote 
of the sea. 



195 

But it was not as the ''farmer of Marshfield " so 
much as the '' Expounder of the Constitution " that the 
repubhc knew Daniel Webster. No other man explained 
or expounded it more clearly, none adhered to it more 
devotedly, believed in it more implicitly, or defended it 
more grandly. Its central thought — the integrity of 
the republic and the permanence of American nation- 
ality — was the one that gave force and direction to his 
life, lifted him to fame, and yet led to his downfall. 

Daniel Webster earnestly desired to be President of 
the United States. But it was not this laudable ambi- 
tion so much as his passionate desire for an undisturbed 
Union that worked his overthrow. For, laboring to pre- 
serve the Union inseparable, he was willing to concede 
too much to mischief-makers, to agree too readily to 
unsafe and impossible compromises, to stifle the warnings 
of his own conscience and the indignant demands of his 
countrymen. This led him to support, in 1850, the 
wicked Fugitive Slave Law, rather than lose to the 
Union the loyalty of the slave States. It was an un- 
wise thing to do ; for, instead of helping the Union, it 
hurt it; and it lost Webster the support of the liberty- 
loving men of the land and the following of the slavery- 
hating North, which had before so honored and idolized 
him. 

That loss of popular favor killed him ; and though 
men look now upon his course with calmer and clearer 
eyes, and hold him guiltless of selfish aims, the common- 
wealth has never ceased to mourn that the man who so 
grandly defended Massachusetts in 1830 should have 
so misjudged or ignored her in 1850. 



196 

And yet, the judgment of Webster and the judgment 
of his fellow-citizens were equally mistaken. History 
proves the first ; those two splendid poems by Whittier, 
" Ichabod " and "The Lost Occasion," establish the 
second. Time, after all, is the surest test of sincerity. 

But what schoolboy does not know that masterly 
defense of Massachusetts that opens Daniel Webster's 
famous reply to Hayne, delivered in the Senate cham- 
ber at Washington on the 26th of January, 1830? Its 
words ring in our ears as grandly as they did in those 
of our fathers and grandfathers seventy years ago : 
'' Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon 
Massachusetts. There she is ! Behold her and judge for 
yourselves. There is her history ; the world knows it 
by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston 
and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill, — and 
there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, 
falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie 
mingled with the soil of every State from New England 
to Georgia ; and there they will lie forever. And, sir, 
where American liberty raised its first voice, and where 
its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in 
the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit." 

There is more in the same lofty strain. Every Mas- 
sachusetts boy and girl — every American, young or old, 
in every part of our common country — should know 
by heart that splendid defense of the Bay State. For 
it is a part, not of the story of Massachusetts alone, but 
of American history and American oratory, — the dig- 
nified, triumphant opening of what has been called 
the ** greatest speech since Demosthenes." 



197 



As a lawyer, as an orator, as a politician, as a states- 
man, as a diplomatist, as an American, Daniel Webster 
honored Massachusetts as her representative in Con- 
gress and the cabinet for nearly thirty years. 

Historians tell us that the two greatest triumphs of 
his life were in oratory and diplomacy, — the matchless 
reply to Hayne in 1830, and his masterly treaty with 
Great Britain in 1842, The first saved the Union; 
the other freed the republic from foreign entanglements 
and encroachments. But these triumphs were but two 
items in the list of Daniel Webster's services for Massa- 
chusetts and the republic. 

He did much for Massachusetts ; he did more for 
America. While he defended and protected the fisheries 
of Massachusetts, upon which so much of her prosperity 
depended, he settled the disputed questions 
of national boundaries, and held America at 
peace with the world. While he made the 
two noble orations that celebrated the begin- 
ning and the completion of the monument on 
Bunker Hill, he inspired by his grander plea 
for an unbroken Union so passionate a patri- 
otism that, ten years after his death, his words 
led the hosts of loyal America to rally in de- 
fense of the Union and the flag. 

And that flag! How de- 
voted was his loyalty to it, how 
enduring his love for it! 

For, as he lay dying, in his 
breezy farmhouse at Marsh- 
field, he would look from his ".^.„„.. ,-.■-'^3^'^^^^' 




98 




L 



window, every morning, to catch the flutter of the Stars 
and Stripes, where, according to his orders, the flag of 
the Union was to float from its staff until his last breath 
had passed. 

" Let my last feeble and lingering glance," he had 
said in that splendid and immortal speech, " behold the 
gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and hon- 
ored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, not 
a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured." 
And so it all happened just as he wished. And thus he 
died, a loyal *son of the repubHc ; thus he lay, guarded 
by the flag he loved ; and one Massachusetts man, who 
had differed from him, but revered him, called him, as 
in the majesty of death, banked in flowers, he lay there 
on his lawn at Marshfield, dead, beneath the autumn 



199 

sky, the " grandest figure in Christendom since Charle- 
magne." 

His fauhs forgotten, his virtues remembered, let every 
boy and girl in America be proud of the fame, and never 
indifferent to the labors of America's grandest states- 
man. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. 



HOW THE "OLD MAN . ELOQUENT " 
WON THE FIGHT. 

ON the famous 17th of June, in the year 1775, a 
prim and precocious small boy of eight stood 
beside his mother on the top of Penns Hill, in the 
north parish of Braintree. Across the intervening stretch 
of blue water he watched the flaming ruins of burn- 
ing Charlestown, and listened to the sounds of conflict 
borne down from the battle of Bunker Hill. 

A cairn and tablet mark this historic spot, while 
below, at the foot of the hill, still stands the old farm- 
house, preserved by patriotic hands, in which in that 
time of stress lived this little boy of eight. 

He was the son of a remarkable father and a no less 
remarkable mother. He had early imbibed the belief 
of his far-seeing father that '' all England will be unable 
to subdue us," and when but nine years old this small 
patriot galloped, as the family postrider, for news of the 
evacuation of Boston, eleven miles distant from the 
Braintree farm. 

That precocious small spectator of the battle of Bun- 
ker Hill, the victory of Dorchester Heights, and the 
evacuation of Boston grew to be quite as remarkable as 
his father and mother. The republic that had made his 
father President of the United States in time made the 



20I 

son President also ; and on the long roll of American 
worthies the great nation writes high and boldly, where 
all the world may read, the name of that noble son of 
Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, the sixth President 
of the United States, son of John Adams and of Abi- 
gail his wife. 

The memory of those boyish experiences in " the 
heart of revolution " amid the first struggles for liberty 
in America never left him. John Quincy Adams was 
always a liberty-lover, the champion of free speech, the 
advocate of human rights. He lived to be eighty-one 
years old, dying actually in the service of the republic, 
stricken by death on the floor of the Capitol, even as 
he rose in his place to catch the Speaker's eye. 

For it is a singular fact in the life of this untiring and 
wonderful man that, after filling the highest office in the 
gift of the people, — that of President of the United 
States, — he accepted after the close of his Presidency, 
and in his sixty-fourth year, a nomination to Congress, 
and for seventeen years served his native State as repre- 
sentative from Massachusetts. 

There he made so remarkable a record for ability, 
zeal, and loyalty to principle that people called him 
the "Old Man Eloquent." Aflame with the desire for 
justice and right, he withstood to the bitterest end what 
he believed to be the unholy aggressions of an unpa- 
triotic section, fighting valiantly and unceasingly for 
individual liberty and for the privilege of the citizen, — 
both of which he held to have been the mainspring of 
that independence for which America had battled when 
he was but a boy. 



202 

As President of the United States John Quincy 
Adams saw the drift of things. He was wonderfully 
clear-headed and far-sighted, and he was really the 
first leader in that long crusade against slavery that 
only terminated in the smoke and roar of the Civil War, 
forty years later. 

It is well indeed for the boys and girls of Massachu- 
setts to remember — in fact, for all Americans to remem- 
ber — that the mighty act of Abraham Lincoln that was 
the turning point of the Civil War and gave the death- 
blow to slavery — the Emancipation Proclamation — was 
based upon a declaration made in Congress, in 1836, by 
John Quincy Adams, to the effect that, in the event of 
a war between the States, the President of the United 
States had power to order the universal emancipation 
of the slaves. For young Abraham Lincoln, the silent 
but watchful congressman from Illinois, stored in his 
memory the words of power and wisdom spoken in 
those stormy days by old John Quincy Adams, the ag- 
gressive and eloquent congressman from Massachusetts. 

That they were stormy days all who follow the stir- 
ring story of John Quincy Adams in his fight for the 
right of petition soon discover. 

''Right of petition" means the right of any Ameri- 
can man or woman to present to Congress, through a 
member of that Congress, a petition for justice, relief, or 
redress. The petition thus presented is handed to the 
proper committee for consideration and action. 

This right the Constitution of the United States ex- 
pressly allows. It is one that Massachusetts, from the 
days of patentees and kings, had strenuously asserted, 



203 




John Quincy Adams. 



and one which such a man as John Quincy Adams 
would not see invaded. Congress, indeed, had never 
before questioned the right, but when 
the people of Massachusetts began to 
send in through their representative, 
Mr. Adams, petitions to limit or abol- 
ish negro slavery in the United States, 
at once there was trouble. 

In those days, the majority in Con- 
gress favored slavery ; the timid or 
fearful members dared not oppose it ; 
and these all combined to suppress 
Mr. Adams or crush him by weight 
of numbers. But they did not know 
their man. John Quincy Adams would not be sup- 
pressed. He would not stay crushed. Again and again 
he presented his petitions, only to be refused a hearing ; 
at last he claimed his right to be heard under the law. 

Then Congress set to work to make a law that should 
shut him off. This was called the " gag law," or '' speech- 
smothering resolution," because it sought to stop all 
reference to slavery in Congress by a law the last clause 
of which declared that " all petitions, memorials, reso- 
lutions, propositions, or papers relating in any way or 
to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery, or the 
abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed 
or referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further 
action whatever shall be had thereon." 

This law, you see, would " gag," or choke off, any 
petition that might be offered, and clearly invaded the 
right granted by the Constitution. 



204 

But if Congress thought this law would " gag " or 
silence John Quincy Adams, they speedily discovered 
their mistake. It was the gauntlet thrown down for 
fight, as in the old days of the knights ; and John 
Quincy Adams, leaping into the lists, picked it up as 
the champion of civil rights. 

" I hold the resolution to be a violation of the Consti- 
tution," he shouted to the hostile Congress, ** of the 
right of petition of my constituents and of the people 
of the United States, and of my right to free speech as 
a member of this house." 

Then the fight began in earnest. The opponents of 
slavery in all parts of the Union recognized that this 
Massachusetts congressman, once President of the 
United States, was the leader of the opposition, and 
they flooded him with petitions against slavery, every 
one of which he duly presented, only to be shut off by 
the gag law, even before he could finish reading the 
title of the petition. 

For months the unequal struggle went on. Nothing 
could turn the purpose or break the will of this stubborn 
old man. Alone, unsupported, indifferent to abuse, 
threat, or censure, he held his own until, by sheer pluck 
and indomitable courage, he won first the respect and 
then the admiration of men. 

" If the gentleman," he said, one day, when the threat 
of arrest and punishment was flung at him, ** thinks to 
frighten me from my purpose, he has mistaken his man. 
I am not to be intimidated by him, nor by all the grand 
juries in the universe." 

There are battles more bitter than Lexington, more 



205 

stubborn than Bunker Hill, fought with the weapons of 
principle, justice, and right, upon whose issue the prog- 
ress of the world depends. Such a battle did John 
Quincy Adams fight alone in the halls of Congress. 

His unyielding position challenged the admiration 
even of his foes. It won anew the honor and respect 
of the people of Massachusetts, who saw their cham- 
pion waging for them a seemingly hopeless battle. 
They welcomed him home with speech and song, and 
showed their appreciation of his heroic stand by re- 
electing him to Congress again and again, that he might 
continue the fight. 

He did continue it. Again and again did he present 
the obnoxious, petitions, only to see them cast aside ; 
again and again did he move the rescinding of the un- 
American gag law, only to be voted down. 

But while holding his adversaries at bay he was 
creating public sentiment. Men began to see that it 
was something more than stubbornness, something 
higher than the mere love of a contest, that was holding 
him to a set purpose. As they grew to believe him 
right, the majorities in support of the gag law grew less 
and less, until at last, in 1844, after fully eight years of 
his struggle for principle, Congress supported his motion 
to rescind the gag law, and the law was defeated by a 
vote of one hundred and eight to eighty. John Quincy 
Adams had won his fight. The right of petition was 
established, the freedom of speech was maintained, and 
the weary old victor wrote in his famous diary : * Blessed, 
forever blessed, be the name of God." 

Four years after, the Old Man Eloquent died in 



206 

harness, in the very place where so much of his busy Hfe 
had been spent. To-day, on the floor of the Capitol 
at Washington, visitors are shown a metalic circle set in 
the marble floor, to mark the spot where John Quincy 
Adams was stricken with death ; and Massachusetts 
enshrines Forever the memory of the " two Adamses," — 
honored father and honored son. 



HOW THE YOUNG KNIGHT OF FREEDOM 
LED THE CRUSADE. 

IN the very year and month in which, in the Con- 
gress of the United States, vaHant old John Quincy 
Adams was fighting his sturdiest for that right of peti- 
tion which was the privilege and birthright of every 
American, a young knight of freedom, in Faneuil Hall 
in Boston, buckled on his armor and fought as gallantly 
as ever did champion of old, and against overwhelming 
odds. It is one of the dramatic scenes in American 
history. 

His name was Wendell Phillips. Rich, handsome, 
well-born, highly educated, refined, a gifted and cul- 
tured son of the ** bluest blood" of the Old Bay State, 
this young Boston lawyer, but newly married and with 
a splendid future prophesied for him by a host of 
admiring friends, strolled into Faneuil Hall one De- 
cember day in the year 1837, drawn there partly by 
curiosity and partly by interest. 

An antislavery man had been murdered in Illinois. 
A martyr to the right of free speech, because he dared 
to speak out against a negro-burning mob, Elijah P. 
Lovejoy, a New England minister, had been brutally 
killed by a mob in Alton. Lovers of free speech in 
Boston protested against this act of barbarism. They 

207 



208 

called for an Indignation meeting in Faneuil Hall, that 
historic "cradle of liberty," and when the meeting was 
held the old hall was crowded. Some of the throng 
were in sympathy with the object of the meeting, but 
more were opposed; for in 1837 even Boston was not 
favorable to ''agitators and abohtionists," as all were 
called who dared speak out against slavery, 

WiUiam Ellery Channing, well styled the " apostle of 
liberty," offered resolutions condemning the Alton mob, 
and pleading for free speech and a free press. But the 
attorney-general of Massachusetts opposed the resolu- 
tion, and made a speech that captured the crowd. He 
said that to free the negro was like letting loose the 
hyena, that the mob which murdered Lovejoy was as 
patriotic as that which threw overboard the tea in Boston 
harbor, and he cast sneers and gibes at those who dared 
to stand against slavery. 

His supporters applauded wildly. The wavering and 
uncertain stampeded to the popular side. The friends 
of free speech were left in a sad minority, expecting to 
see Dr. Channing's resolutions voted down, and censure 
turned into glorification. 

Young Wendell Phillips, with no thought of speak- 
ing, stood on the crowded floor, watchful and interested ; 
his sympathies went out toward the losing side of free- 
dom. Could no one sway that throng and bring'it back 
to reason, justice, and right? 

Suddenly the inspiration came to him to attempt 
that very thing, — to strike one blow for freedom, and 
champion the cause of the defeated and oppressed. 
Without a moment's hesitation, he leaped to the stage, 



209 



flung aside his overcoat, and faced that shouting, sway- 
ing, unfriendly mass. 

Calm-faced, clear-eyed, dignified, unruffled, deter- 
mined, he stood an instant, — the very picture of a young 

knight superbly fronting his 
foes. 

Then he spoke. His melo- 
dious voice, wonderful in tone 
and attractiveness, stilled the 
clamor for an instant, but 
with his first words it broke 
out afresh, seeking to 
silence him. But he 
would not be 
silenced, and 
then he made 
a speech such 
as had not 
been heard in 
Boston since 
the day when 
JamesOtis, in 
the historic 
old Statehouse, flamed out for revolution, and lighted 
the path for Massachusetts to resistance and liberty. 

"The drunken murderers of Lovejoy compared to 
those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! " he 
exclaimed. " Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doc- 
trine ? The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a 
citizen his just rights, — met to resist the laws. We have 
been toki that our fathers did the same. . . . Our 
Brooks's bay sta.— 14 




2IO 

State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams 
to prove taxes laid by the British Parliament unconsti- 
tutional, — beyond its power. It was not till this was 
made out that the men of New England rushed to 
arms. . . . To draw the conduct of our ancestors into 
a precedent for malice, for a right to resist laws we our- 
selves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. . . . 
Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles 
which place the murderers of Alton side by side with 
Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought 
those pictured lips " (here he pointed to the portraits in 
the hall) *' would have broken into voice to rebuke the 
recreant American, the slanderer of the dead! " 

The hall rang with cheers. The doubters rallied 
again to the side of right. Mob law was in the mi- 
nority. The young knight's lance had shivered the 
attorney-general's shield. Then he ran at his antago- 
nist full tilt, and unhorsed him with this sphntering 
charge : 

" The gentleman said he should sink into insignificance 
if he condescended to gainsay the principles of these 
resolutions. For the sentiments he has uttered, on soil 
consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of 
patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed 
him up! " 

The supporters of the overthrown attorney-general 
rallied to his aid. With yells and howls, and force of fist 
and elbow, they endeavored to create a riot and break 
up the meeting. But their shouts were drowned in the 
cheers of the increasing majority; their efforts toward 
force were quelled ; and when again that calm, convinc- 



211 

ing voice fell upon their ears, even the hostile cries were 
hushed as hostile ears drank in the compelling words: 

'' Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press ! Why ? 
Because the defense was unsuccessful?" Does success 
gild crime into patriotism, and want of it change heroic 
self-devotion to independence? . . . With what scorn 
would that Tory have been received who, after the 
battle of Bunker Hill, should have charged Warren 
with imprudence! Who should have said that, bred as 
a physician, he was ' out of place ' in the battle, and 
'died as the fool dieth ' ! " (Both of these things the 
attorney- general had charged against Lovejoy.) *' But 
if success be, indeed, the only criterion of prudence, 
wait till the end." 

Thus he went on, while the crowded hall hung upon 
his words. But when he boldly asserted that the prin- 
ciple for which Lovejoy died was above even that which 
provoked the Revolution — taxation without representa- 
tion — the smoldering disapproval of the mob burst into 
flame, and again the brave young fighter stood at bay. 

" One word, gentlemen," he said, waving back the dis- 
turbance. " As much as thought is better than money, 
so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than 
a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this 
hall when the king did but touch his pocket. Imagine, 
if you can, his indignant eloquence had England offered 
to put a gag upon his lips." 

Again the hall rang with cheers, and hostility sank, 
baffled, while the young orator proceeded. 

" The question that stirred the Revolution," he said, 
" touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only 



212 

as citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its 
fate, saved or lost with it, are not only the voice of the 
statesman, but the instruction of the pulpit and the 
progress of our faith." 

How true a prophet was this miracle-made young 
orator the future was to show. For wrapped up in the 
cause that he so fearlessly championed were the life of 
the republic and the test of patriotism. 

Thus he fought on to a finish, with one last spear 
thrust carrying away the prize for which he had sprung 
into the lists. 

*' I am glad, sir," he said, " to see this crowded house. 
It is good for us to be here. When liberty is in dan- 
ger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike 
the keynote for these United States. I am glad, for 
one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have 
alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these 
resolutions, in spite of this opposition led by the at- 
torney-general of the commonwealth, will show more 
clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation with which 
Boston regards this outrage." 

He closed amid a storm of applause. The chairman 
put the resolutions ; they were carried by an overwhelm- 
ing vote. The young knight of freedom had won his 
spurs in an unequal fight, and the fame of Wendell 
Phillips as an orator was laid in that wonderful and 
magnetic victory. 

He championed a weak, unpopular, detested cause; 
for the people woke but slowly to the real wickedness 
of a condition with which they had always been familiar, 
and which had existed in America from earliest years. 



213 

To be sure, Massachusetts recognized almost In its 
very beginning the injustice of slavery. Section 91 of 
the " Body of Liberties," adopted by the Massachusetts 
Bay colony in 1641, expressly decreed that " there shall 
never be any bond slavery, villanage, or captivity among 
us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars;" and 
a certain enterprising sea captain who had brought over 
a cargo of captured Africans as a speculation was im- 
prisoned, while the kidnaped negroes were at once 
sent home at the colony's expense. 

But the chances for money-making in this unlawful 
pursuit, and the existence of slavery in other colonies, 
proved too much for the enterprising Yankee of the Bay 
colony ; in 1 700 the slave trade was a recognized Boston 
industry, and slavery was permitted in Massachusetts. 

But the Puritan conscience was against it ; the custom 
of slaveholding was not really suited to Massachusetts 
soil ; it gradually declined, and when the new State of 
Massachusetts was formed, the courts held that this first 
article in the Constitution of Massachusetts abolished 
slavery in the State : " All men are born free and equal, 
and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable 
rights ; among which may be reckoned the right of en- 
joying and defending their lives and liberties." 

So died slavery in Massachusetts. But when the 
agitation for its abolition in all the States of the Union 
was begun, people were slow to respond. They thought 
it looked too much like interfering in their neighbors' 
business, and no American likes to do that. 

But gradually the people of Massachusetts grew to 
think more seriously about this increasing evil, and to feel 



214 



that if slavery were a blot on the fair name of America, 
all the States had equal interest in having the stain 
removed. 

The cause of abolition enlisted the sympathies of 
many wise and good and justice-loving people; but so, 
too, was it espoused by unwise, fanatical, and reckless 
folk. These gave it a bad name ; but it grew, in spite 
of its overzealous friends, and triumphed finally, not 
from the acts of the fanatic, but because of the stern and 
determined stand taken by the conservative men of 

the republic, — men 
who, like Abraham 
Lincoln, saw that 
slavery was sapping 
the strength of the 
nation, and so, when 
the time came, put 
an end to it. 

But in that stern, 
unceasing, bitter, and 
relentless fight against 
slavery Massachusetts 
led, because Massa- 
chusetts stood for and 
was pledged to equal 
rights. 

And in the van, 
fighting ever with his 
face toward the foe, 
often far outstripping 
his fellow-soldiers. 




Wendell Phillips in the doorway of his 
old honne in Essex Street. 



"In this house Ann 
forty years — 1882. 



and 1 lived for more than 
Wendell Phillips." 



215 

was the young knight of freedom who won his spurs in 
Faneuil Hall — Wendell Phillips of Boston. 

Fearless, though often hot-headed; valiant, though 
often relentless ; with a tongue that was as sharp as a 
sword, and a wit that was as ready as a spear ; often 
doing things that those who admired him could not 
approve ; defeated, but never dispirited ; cast down, but 
never dismayed ; fighting, fighting, fighting still, until 
he grew gray in the service, — at last Wendell Phillips saw 
victory perch upon the banners of his hope, and freedom 
established in America. 

And when, at last, the work begun by Lincoln's 
Emancipation Proclamation was completed by the Fif- 
teenth Amendment, under Grant, in 1870, Wendell 
Phillips telegraphed to a friend who had fought beside 
himx in that forty years' war: 

** Let me exchange congratulations with you. Our 
long work is sealed at last. The nation proclaims equal 
Hberty. To-day is its real birthday. ' lo! Triomphe! ' 
Thank God." 

Thereupon the American Antislavery Society, of 
which Wendell PhilHps was president, died because it had 
nothing to do. Following the dauntless lead of Wendell 
Phillips, it had fought its way to victory ; then it dis- 
solved. And Massachusetts had been the bone and 
sinew of that famous organization. 

" When I read a subUme fact in Plutarch," said Phillips, 
at the final meeting of his society, " an unselfish deed 
in a line of poetry, or thrill beneath some heroic legend, 
it is no longer fairyland; I have seen it matched." 

"Wolfe died in the arms of victory," Charles Sumner 



2l6 

of Massachusetts wrote to him, " and such is the fortune 
of your noble society." 

To-day in Essex Street, Boston, a tablet marks the 
site of the home of Wendell Phillips — the brave Bos- 
tonian who championed an unpopular cause and turned 
protest into victory. 

And the republic, now that the strife is past and old 
sores are healed, forgets the faults and errors of those 
stirring days, and, recognizing the fervor of the reformer 
rather than of the fanatic, thanks God alike for Wendell 
Phillips, the Antislavery Society, and the firm front of 
Massachusetts. 



HOW THE HIGH SHERIFF'S PROPHECY 
CAME TRUE. 

THE high sheriff of Suffolk County in the com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts, as became such a 
high official of that State, believed in three things, — law, 
liberty, and order. Two things he hated above all 
others, — rum and slavery. One thing he was pledged 
to absolutely, -requal rights for all. 

And when he saw how the error of ownership in 
men was stirring the people of the land to wrangling 
and strife, he looked down upon his solemn little nine- 
year-old son and said to him solemnly : " Some day 
our children's heads will be broken on this slavery 
question." 

How really prophetic this utterance of the high 
sheriff of Suffolk was history has recorded. It came 
true with starthng nearness to his own flesh and blood. 
It was his son who, thirty-six years after, was to make 
that prophecy true, as on the floor of Congress he fell 
stricken down, his head literally broken by the champion 
of the cause which father and son alike had battled. 
For the high sheriff of Suffolk County in the com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts, in the year 1820, was 
Charles Pinckney Sumner, and his nine-year-old son 
was that Charles Sumner whom men now honor as the 

217 



2l8 




foremost statesman of the Civil War period, the great 
senator from Massachusetts. 

He was the schoolmate and college mate of Wendell 
Phillips. Like Phillips, handsome and well-bred, a scion 
of the " blue blood " of Boston, — like Phillips, too, a bril- 
liant lawyer, a powerful speaker, and 
a logical thinker, — he might have 
made himself selfishly rich in his 
profession. Instead, he preferred 
principle to profit, and his first pub- 
lic appearance, in 1846, was at Fan- 
euil Hall, like that of Wendell Phil- 
lips, at a meeting presided over by 
that heroic old champion of equal 
rights, John Quincy Adams, to pro- 
test against sending back into slav- 
ery a captured fugitive slave. 
"Freedom is national; slavery is sectional." That 
was the central thought of all Charles Sumner's splendid 
utterances. It was the truth he proclaimed for forty 
years. It was the keynote to the first articles he pub- 
lished in 1 841, to the first speech he made in Congress, 
and to all the appeals and arguments, the orations, 
speeches, and public acts, that filled his days from that 
first speech in Faneuil Hall to the final triumph of the 
cause he so nobly championed. 

But that devotion to principle made the prophecy of 
his father, the high sheriff of Suffolk, come true, and 
well-nigh wrought his death. 

In Massachusetts the opposition to the extension of 
slavery in the republic broke in pieces the old Whig 



Charles Sumner. 



219 

party, which succeeded to Sam Adams's Revolution- 
ary party and George Washington's FederaHst party, 
and which was said to take its odd name from the first 
four letters of its motto: '* We Hope In God." Out of 
some of these pieces was formed first the Liberty party 
of 1840, and then, in 1848, the Free-soil party — the 
forerunners of the great Republican party that came 
into power with Abraham Lincoln. 

This Free-soil party Charles Sumner helped to form. 
It sent him to Congress as a senator from Massachusetts 
in 1850, and kept him there until the day of his death, 
long after the Free-soilers had become Republicans. 

In Congress he represented Massachusetts grandly ; 
but still more did he represent liberty and that grow- 
ing conscience of the republic which finally proclaimed 
equal rights to all. He was no extremist, like Wen- 
dell Phillips, who was sometimes very nearly a fanatic 
in his actions as an agitator, and said things unwise and 
seemingly unpatriotic. Charles Sumner was, above all, 
an American, and so true and high-reaching an Ameri- 
can that often his own countrymen misunderstood and 
misjudged him, because he was restless under anything 
that seemed to limit American ideals or stain American 
honor. His faith was founded on the Declaration of 
Independence ; his desire was a right reading of the 
Constitution. 

So at forty Charles Sumner became a senator of the 
United States. A grand and impressive figure, his very 
first speech was the expression of his belief: " Freedom 
is national; slavery is sectional." 

For sixteen years he kept that truth before his col- 



220 

leagues and the country, defying in an unfriendly Sen- 
ate the whole force of the slavery power. 

He stood his ground manfully. Nothing dismayed, 
nothing disheartened him. Unruffled by detraction, 
unharmed by sarcasm, unmoved by threats, he main- 
tained his position, and kept up the fight, stern, solid, 
unyielding, determined, a strong and sure bulwark of the 
cause he championed, — " the noblest contribution made 
by Boston and Massachusetts to the antislavery cause," 
as has well been said. 

Those were the days of arrangement and compro- 
mise, when less determined men than Wendell Phillips 
and Charles Sumner were ready to do anything, con- 
cede anything, to avoid trouble. And thus the South 
got all the benefits, and slavery grew. 

But when at last, in violation of constitutional rights 
and solemn agreements, it was attempted to settle the 
newly organized Territory of Kansas as a slave State, 
then Charles Sumner boldly threw down the gage of 
battle, with the life of Kansas as the prize. " The issue 
is before us," he exclaimed, with an earnestness that 
aroused both friend and foe. " To every man in the 
land it says with clear, penetrating voice : ' Are you 
for freedom or are you for slavery? 

Massachusetts was deeply interested in this now 
historic event, — the settlement of Kansas. The free- 
men of the commonwealth determined to make the 
new Territory a free State. Colonization societies were 
formed, and emigration and colonization schemes were 
fostered. 

While Massachusetts, with men and money, was help- 



221 



ing the cause of freedom in Kansas, Charles Sumner in 
Congress was doing his part by argument, speech, and vote. 

His efforts culminated in his famous two-day speech, 
in May, 1856, known from its subject as the "Crime 
against Kansas." 

It depicted in strong, unsparing language the wrong 
against freedom wrought by the slave power in America, 
especially in the new Territory of Kansas, solemnly 
pledged to freedom. The speech was pitiless in its in- 
vectives and personalities, — " the severe and awful truth 
which the sharp agony of the nation demanded," said 
the gentle but determined and liberty-loving Whittier. 

It told the truth; it was 
unanswerable. It was not 
answered by words ; but 
one Preston S. Brooks of 
South Carolina, who was 
a member of the House 
of Representatives, and a 
relative of one whom Sum- 
ner had there personally 
arraigned, was 
stung to mad- 
ness by the 
speech of the 
Massachusetts 
senator, and 
vowed venge- 
ance. He 
strode into the 
Senate cham- 




222 

ber, and, while Sumner sat bent over his desk, absorbed 
in letter- writing, Brooks fell upon him, and with a heavy- 
cane savagely and relentlessly beat the unprotected man 
over the head until, stunned and bleeding, Charles 
Sumner fell senseless to the floor. 

Thus was the high sheriff's prophecy fulfilled. But 
Kansas became a free State. May Kansas never forget 
at what a cost to Massachusetts her birthright was as- 
sured ! 

Sumner, after years of untold agony and suffering, 
recovered. But the blow that struck him down awoke 
the whole land to action, and started the movement 
toward protest and assertion that finally crowned with 
triumph the long struggle for equal rights. 

The attack on Charles Sumner stirred Massachusetts 
to its center. Indignation meetings were held through- 
out the commonwealth, and, as was said by Henry Wil- 
son, the other Massachusetts senator, and later Vice- 
President of the United States, ** Of the twelve hundred 
thousand people of Massachusetts, you cannot find in 
the State one thousand, administration officeholders 
included, who do not look with loathing and execration 
upon the outrage on the person of their senator and the 
honor of their State." Massachusetts at once voted to 
assume all the expenses of its great senator's illness; but 
Sumner, when he heard of this action, as promptly de- 
clined the honor. " Whatever Massachusetts can give," 
he said, " let it all go to suffering Kansas." 

Charles Sumner, during his torturing illness, was 
overwhelmingly reelected to the Senate ; and during his 
four years of absence his vacant seat was Massachusetts's 



223 

eloquent testimony to his sacrifice ; for the great sena- 
tor, as Tacitus said of a similar vacant seat in the Senate 
of old Rome, " was the more conspicuous because not 
there." 

But he returned at last to do valiant service. And 
for fourteen years longer, until his death in 1874, he 
stood boldly for Massachusetts as her most honored 
senator, the sagest head — saving always the mighty 
Lincoln — in the councils of the nation which he had, at 
such a cost, helped into greatness and freedom as the 
wisest, noblest, grandest champion of the equality of 
man before the law. 



HOW GOVERNOR JOHN ANDREW TOOK 
THINGS IN HAND. 

IN the year 1861 a chubby, curly- headed little man 
took the executive chair as governor of Massa- 
chusetts. His name was John Albion Andrew. 

With neither the personal presence of Charles Sum- 
ner, the commanding grace of Wendell PhiUips, nor 
the magnetic eloquence of either, he had ever been as 
earnest a worker in behalf of freedom, and had shown 
himself the friend of the broken, the dispirited, and the 
oppressed, and an intense lover of the Union, '* one and 
indivisible," but free. 

In face and form he did not suggest the hero ; he 
was more like Pickwick than like Pericles ; and when he 
was elected governor of that commonwealth whose long 
array of chief magistrates, from John Hancock and 
Samuel Adams to Edward Everett and Nathaniel Pren- 
tiss Banks, had been men of dignity, force, and ability, 
those who had voted for him with hesitation feared lest 
he prove unsafe as a radical reformer or wanting in 
executive ability. 

They speedih^ discovered their mistake. That little 
man in the governor's chair towered over all his pred- 
ecessors as a giant in ability, ** the safest pilot that 
ever weathered a storm." 

224 



225 

Even when he entered office as governor of Massa- 
chusetts that storm was gathering fast, and John Albion 
Andrew was one of the first to discover it. The fric- 
tion between the North and the South over the ques- 
tion of slavery and the maintenance of the Union, which 
began with John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts in 
the Congress of 1836, and culminated with Charles 
Sumner of Massachusetts in the Congress of 1856, be- 
came unendurable in 1861. One by one, the States of 
the South seceded, Sumter was fired upon, the war for 
the Union began. 

Of the sixteen famous and remarkable American 
** war governors " who upheld the hands of the general 
government through those four terrible years of civil 
war, none is more famous or was more remarkable than 
John Albion Andrew, the twenty-first governor of 
Massachusetts. 

The bursting of the storm found him preparing. He 
was inaugurated on the 5th of January, 1861, and that 
very day he sent confidential messengers to the gov- 
ernors of the other New England States, prophesying 
war, and urging united and immediate military prepa- 
rations. On the 1 6th of January he ordered that the 
ranks of the State militia be filled with able-bodied men, 
"prepared for any emergency which may arise," and 
on the 1st of February the State legislature, compelled 
by the governor's urgency, voted an "emergency fund " 
of one hundred thousand dollars, and authorized him 
to organize and equip as many military companies and 
regiments "as the public exigency may require." 

Though men smiled at their governor's " rush," and 

BROOKS'S BAVSTA. — 15 



226 

scouted his idea of war, that exigency was not far off. 
It came, at last, with the attack on Fort Sumter on the 




1 2th of April, 1 86 1, and the call of the President, on 
the 15th of April, for seventy-five thousand volunteers 
to defend the Union. 

The volunteers of Massachusetts were ready. Dur- 
ing the months of uncertainty, while others were wait- 
ing. Governor Andrew was acting. The militia was 
strengthened ; defenses were investigated ; blankets, 
cartridges, and knapsacks for two thousand troops were 
secured ; overcoats were purchased (and for a long time 
these infantry overcoats were called ''Andrew's over- 
coats ") ; correspondence was kept up ; a secret message 
cipher was arranged ; and quick routes to Washington 
were studied and selected. 

The governor's proclamation followed close upon that 
of the President, and when, on the 15 th of April, two 



227 

regiments were telegraphed for from Washington, four, 
on the 1 6th, were ordered to muster on Boston Common. 

They responded at once, — Captain Allen's company 
from Abington, three companies of the Eighth from 
Marblehead, Captain Richardson's company from Cam- 
bridge (the first recruits of the war), Captain Dever- 
eaux's company from Salem, Captain Dike's company 
from Stoneham, with Captain Pratt's battalion of rifles 
and Captain Sampson's Boston company. These were 
first on the ground, and, a storm preventing the muster 
on the Common, they made their headquarters, as was 
most fitting, at Faneuil Hall. Others followed fast, and 
on the 1 7th three regiments were hurried south : first, in 
the afternoon, the Fourth by steamer to Fortress Mon- 
roe ; an hour later the Sixth, by rail, to Washington ; 
and, during the night the Third, by steamer, to Fortress 
Monroe. The Eighth followed, by rail, on the i8th ; and 
so vigorous was the governor's action, and so well laid 
his plans, that, in an incredibly short time, out from 
peaceful Massachusetts and her fourteen counties went 
nearly four thousand officers and men, volunteers for 
three months' service, hurrying " on to Washington." 

" It was these militia regiments, and such as these," 
says Colonel Higginson, " that saved the nation during 
that first period of peril." 

Of these earhest departures, the Sixth Massachusetts 
Regiment, commanded by Colonel Jones of Pepperell, 
was the first armed regiment to reach Washington, the 
first to shed its blood in the cause of the Union, the first 
to become famous. The whole land knows the story of 
the attack on the Sixth Massachusetts at Baltimore, 



228 

where, on the 19th of April, 1861, — a day historic in the 
Bay State's Revolutionary story, — four Massachusetts 
soldiers were killed and thirty-six wounded by the mob 
of the Baltimore streets. It was the first blood of 
the Civil War, and well did Massachusetts avenge it. 
But when, thirty- seven years after, that same Sixth 
Regiment of Massachusetts volunteers again marched 
through Baltimore to join the soldiers of the South on 
the mission of liberty and redemption for Cuba, the 
streets of the beautiful city resounded with cheers of 
welcome and cries of brotherhood. Much can happen 
in thirty -seven years, but no more significant happen- 
ing was ever recorded than Baltimore's shouts of wel- 
come in 1898 to the regiment whom she had met with 
blows and curses in 1861. 

In all those four years of woeful civil war the State of 
Massachusetts sent to the defense of the Union, as her 
contribution to the armies and navy of the United 
States, one hundred and sixty thousand men. Every 
city and town in the State filled its quota whenever the 
President called for troops, — in fact, the returns show 
that sixteen thousand more men than were called for 
were enlisted in Massachusetts. 

Promptness in the field, a high standard of fighting 
men, freedom from unsoldierly actions, an excess of vol- 
unteers over the government quota, men toughened into 
tireless soldiers, and officers developed into such able 
leaders as Lowell and Bartlett and Banks and Devens 
and Miles, — this was the record of Massachusetts in the 
field ; and for it John Albion Andrew, " a governor who 
appreciated the situation," was largely responsible. 



229 

Equally responsible, too, was he for the energy and 
reliability of the commonwealth. No one man can be 
responsible for the patriotism of a people schooled to 
that high duty by Revolutionary traditions, or for a pub- 
lic opinion founded upon an ardent love of liberty; but 
for the practical development of that public opinion, and 
the right direction of that patriotism, Governor John 
Andrew was peculiarly fitted, and right gallantly did 
he take things in hand. 

Under his direction and the inspiration of their cause, 
the soldiers fought, the people gave. Out of her State 
treasury Massachusetts contributed to the expenses of 
the war twenty-eight millions of dollars, not counting 
the expenditures of the cities and towns ; she paid in 
gold all the interest of her debt incurred for war pur- 
poses ; she kept her credit unimpaired, and her name 
high for honor, integrity, and loyalty, upholding by the 
patience, endurance, and desire of her citizens the hands 
of their great war governor, and of their sons and fathers 
who, on land and sea, were fighting the battles of the Union. 

The chubby little war governor had done his duty 
nobly. He had become a great, an historic figure. 
Watchful ever, restless in his energy, tireless in his 
activity, putting forth all his powers for the great cause 
that was battling for its life, writing thousands of letters, 
meeting extraordinary expenses, and never sparing his 
own pocket, Governor John Andrew threw himself, heart 
and soul, into the task of strengthening the federal gov- 
ernment and helping it on toward victory. 

And when victory came at last, when, in the State- 
house on the hill, the home-coming regiments delivered 



230 



into the custody of the governor of the State the flags 
they had so vaHantly borne through the four dreadful 
battle years, who so happy as Governor Andrew? He 
received, on behalf of the State of Massachusetts, those 
stained and tattered battle flags, '* to be sacredly pre- 
served forever in the archives of the commonwealth, 
as grand emblems of the heroic services and patriotic 
devotion to liberty and union of one hundred and forty 
thousand of her dead and living sons." 

So ran the order of " his Excellency, John A. Andrew, 
governor and commander in chief." 

Up the street to the Statehouse, bearing their colors, 
marched four thousand of the veterans of the Old Bay 
State. It was upon a most appropriate day, — the 22d of 

December, 1865, 
the two hundred 
and forty-fifth an- 
niversary of the 
landing of the Pil- 
grims of Plymouth, 
— a typical and a 
fitting day ; and in 
the presence of a 
host of spectators 
the governor re- 
ceived the colors. 

'' It is, sir," said 
General Couch, who 
led the returning 
volunteers, *' a pe- 
culiar satisfaction 




231 

and pleasure to us that you, who have been an honor 
to the State and nation, from your marked patriotism 
and fidelity throughout the war, and have been iden- 
tified with every organization before you, are now to 
receive back, as the State custodian of her precious 
relics, these emblems of the devotion of her sons. May 
it please your Excellency, the colors of the Massachu- 
setts volunteers are returned to the State." 

The drums rolled, the bugles blew the salute to the 
flag, and the governor received the colors. 

'* General," he said, '' this pageant, so full of pathos 
and of glory, forms the concluding scene in the long 
series of visible actions and events, in which Massachu- 
setts has borne a part, for the overthrow of rebellion and 
the vindication of the Union. . . . Proud memories of 
many a field, sweet memories alike of valor and friend- 
ship, sad memories of fraternal strife, tender memories 
of our fallen brothers and sons whose dying eyes looked 
last upon their flaming folds, grand memories of heroic 
virtues subHmed by grief, exultant memories of the 
great and final victory of our country, our Union, and 
the righteous cause, thankful memories of a deliverance 
wrought out for human nature itself, unexampled by 
any former achievement of arms, immortal memories 
with immortal honors blended, — all twine round these 
splintered staves, weave themselves along the warp and 
woof of these familiar flags, war-worn, begrimed, and 
baptized with blood. ... I accept these relics in behalf 
of the people and the government. They will be pre- 
served and cherished, amid all the vicissitudes of the 
future, as mementos of brave men and noble actions." 



232 

And to-day, in the noble rotunda of the Statehouse, 
upon the clustered battle flags, *' sacredly preserved," 
looks down the portrait of that man of the hour from 
whose hands they came and to whom they returned, the 
man who took things in hand at a ticklish time, and did his 
duty nobly, unflinchingly, and completely, — John Albion 
Andrew, the great " war governor " of Massachusetts. 

" Forewarned is forearmed ;" that was Governor John 
Andrew's motto in 1861. How practical a one it was 
this story of the Old Bay State's efficiency amid those 
first cries for succor and defense that came up from the 
threatened capital has told you ; and the lesson of readi- 
ness that Governor John Andrew set in 1861 was not 
forgotten when once again, in 1898, came the call for 
troops to uphold the republic's stern decree that human- 
ity, not persecution, justice, not tyranny, should control 
in Cuba. 

" Ready," said Governor Roger Wolcott, when the 
word came for the Massachusetts quota. And so well 
filled, well drilled, and well equipped were the four 
regiments of the Massachusetts volunteers selected to 
answer the first call that, in the first advance on Cuba, 
largely composed of regular troops, the Second Regi- 
ment of Massachusetts volunteer militia was one of the 
two regiments assigned to a foremost place, simply 
because it was ready and in prime condition to take 
part in an active campaign. 

Truly the seeds sown by Governor John Andrew, 
thirty-seven years before, had borne excellent fruit. 
The Old Bay State, thanks to his teaching, is never to 
be caught napping. 



HOW THE BAY STATE READ THE 
GOLDEN RULE ANEW. 

THE great senator paced the floor of the Senate 
chamber. It was a way he had. Restlessness 
had become a habit; walking was helpful to thought, 
and motion was at once ease and rest. For, ever since 
the brutal blow that struck him down, and the even 
more terrible ordeal of fire and pain through which 
skillful surgery brought him back to hfe, Charles Sum- 
ner could not long keep still. 

The senior senator from Massachusetts was not ex- 
actly playful in disposition, though he did have a certain 
suggestion of humor and good-fellowship ; but he had a 
way of rewarding the boy pages who ran errands in the 
Senate with appreciative pinches of the ear. Great great 
men and little great men sometimes use that method of 
showing appreciation for services rendered ; it was one 
of Napoleon's historic traits. 

On this especial day in December, 1872, the great 
senator was on his feet, walking the floor, deep in 
thought; and as one of the smaller pages, a boy in 
whom he had shown considerable interest, returned 
with a reply to some message with which he had been 
intrusted, Sumner coupled his deep-toned thanks with 
the customary ear pinch. Then, lapsing again into 

233 



234 



thought, he quite forgot to remove his fingers from the 
page's ear. 

The boy scarcely felt justified in calling out " Let 
go! " to the senator of whom all the pages and a good 

many grown-up 
people stood in 
such awe. So for 
some minutes the 
dignified Senate 
of the United 
States was highly 
amused to see its 
most illustrious 
although decided- 
ly absent-minded 
member and a 
small but very 
wide-awake boy 
parading the floor 
of the Senate. But 
even though the 
senator pinched 
hard, what boy would not, in after years, have been 
glad to remember his '' close connection " with Sena- 
tor Sumner? 

That page remembered it certainly, and, years after, 
duly recorded it. 

"As the senator was a tall man," he says, "and I 
was a very small boy in comparison, I had to walk on 
tiptoe to ease the pain, and even then it seemed as if 
my ear would come off my head. . . . With long strides 




235 

he mechanically paced up and down, while I danced a 
mild war dance for some minutes, — it seemed to me 
hours, — to the intense amusement of all who observed 
it. The more I struggled, the more did I increase the 
agony ; but I at last managed to wriggle away from his 
grasp. The sudden emptiness of his hand caused him 
to realize the state of affairs, and he begged my pardon 
energetically, while the spectators smiled audibly." 

It was a time of thoughtfulness in the great senator's 
life. He had a duty on his mind ; and Charles Sum- 
ner was never a man to neglect or shirk a duty. 

The war had long been over. Distressing differences 
of opinion on questions of policy and statesmanship, on 
which he took the unpopular side, had alienated the sup- 
porters and disturbed the friends of the senator from 
Massachusetts, — differences with his old-time associates ; 
differences with the great soldier who had served the 
republic as general, and was serving it, as he felt, along 
the hne of duty, as President ; above all, differences as 
to the right course of action toward those who, once in 
arms against the government, were now fellow-country- 
men again, Americans all. 

In January, 1869, Massachusetts, for the fourth time, 
had elected Charles Sumner her senior senator. The 
oldest senator of the United States in years of contin- 
uous service, he had become an historical figure, dig- 
nified, laborious, eloquent, faithful, great in all the 
things that make statesmanship and manhood. 

But that fourth term of service had been full of diffi- 
culties and differences, and in no way more so than in 
the results attendant upon his attitude toward the South. 



236 

Charles Sumner was the champion of equal rights. 
But to him "equal" meant equal; "all men" meant 
all men; and while he labored to his dying day for 
"civil rights" to all, white and black alike, his noble 
nature had no tinge of resentment, jealousy, prejudice, 
spite, or hate. 

When, by criticism and cartoon, both alike reckless 
and brutal, those who dissented from his methods 
charged him, as they expressed it, with " placing flow- 
ers on the grave " of the man who struck him down, 
Sumner's manly and indignant reply was, "What have 
I to do with that poor creature? It was slavery, not 
he, who struck the blow." And so he preached the 
great and Christian doctrine of peace and reconciliation. 
But in 1872 men were not yet ready to rise to that 
high and noble level, even though Charles Sumner was. 

He openly proclaimed his demand for simple justice, 
forbearance, and equal rights. " From the beginning," 
he wrote to Whittier, poet of peace and freedom, " while 
insisting upon all possible securities and safeguards, I 
have pleaded for ' reconciliation ' ! This word recurs 
frequently in my speeches. The South insisted that I 
was revengeful. Never! And now the time has come 
for me to show the mood in which I acted." 

The time was ripe on that December day in 1872 
when he quite forgot himself and the page who suffered 
under his appreciation. His mind was full of a great 
thought, — though to him it seemed as simple as truth. 

Painfully he rose in his seat in the Senate chamber, — 
for the old wound still sapped his strength and vigor, — 
and asked leave to introduce a bill. It was this: 



237 

** Whereas, The national unity and good will among 
fellow-citizens can be assured only through oblivion of 
past differences, and it is contrary to the usages of 
civilized nations to perpetuate the memory of civil war; 
therefore, be it enacted that the names of battles with 
fellow-citizens shall not be continued in the Army Regis- 
ter, or placed on the regimental colors of the United 
States." 

Magnanimity, forgiveness, charity, brotherly love, all 
virtues that Christianity inculcates and its mighty founder 
preached were in that simple resolution, — these, and, 
besides, the " usage of civilized nations." 

But men had not yet learned to read aright the 
golden rule. There was a storm of dissent ; a false 
patriotism broke into protest ; there was criticism and 
clamor all over the North ; and Massachusetts made a 
mighty mistake. 

Boston had fallen a prey to disaster. The great fire 
of November, 1872, had destroyed business property to 
the value of eighty millions of dollars, and laid a great 
section of the old town in ruins. The whole world ex- 
pressed its sympathy and offered aid. An extra session 
of the legislature had been called in view of this great 
disaster. It was a time for helpfulness and charity. 

And yet, that very legislature of the commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, when it heard of the noble resolution 
introduced into Congress by its greatest senator, made 
wreck of a golden opportunity, went wild with rage, 
and, through the member from Athol, drafted and 
passed a resolution of censure, condemning that manly 
act of Charles Sumner as ** an insult to the loyal soldiery 



238 

of the nation, depreciating their grand achievements in 
the late rebelHon, and meeting the unquaUfied con- 
demnation of the people of the commonwealth." 

That was the mistake of Massachusetts, and bitterly 
has the commonwealth repented it. Its legislature, yield- 
ing to a supposed public opinion which was really only a 
thoughtless popular clamor, censured Charles Sumner, 
its champion for freedom and civil rights, himself the 
most notable victim of the evil which he had overthrown 
and was now ready to forgive and forget. 

But Charles Sumner was not one to retreat. " I can- 
not comprehend this tempest," he wrote to his old friend 
and sympathizer, Wendell Phillips. " I know I never 
deserved better of Massachusetts than now. It was 
our State which led in requiring all safeguards for lib- 
erty and equality ; I covet for her that other honor of 
leading in reconciliation. First in civilization, Massa- 
chusetts must insist that our flags shall be brought into 
conformity with the requirements of civilization." 

The tempest slowly spent itself. The better thought 
of the commonwealth rallied to the support of her 
great and noble senator. His wisdom and purpose 
were appreciated. In the very next session of the legis- 
lature a notable petition was presented, signed by sol- 
diers and merchants, politicians and workingmen, black 
and white citizens alike, antislavery veterans and vet- 
erans of the victorious blue, asking that the resolutions 
of censure be rescinded and annulled. Patriots in other 
States appealed to Massachusetts for justice to her 
noblest man. But to no purpose. The ignoble reso- 
lution stood. The mistake was not yet retrieved. 



239 

Honorable men throughout the world condemned 
this monumental obstinacy. But Charles Sumner, too, 
remained firm. He knew that he was right, and, with 
him, to be right was greater than to be popular. 

"Where is Massachusetts's civilization?" he de- 
manded. *' Thus far our commonwealth has led in the 
great battle of liberty and equality. By the blessing of 
God, she shall yet lead again in smoothing the wrinkled 
front of war." 

The months went by. Sober second thought came 
at last to those who opposed him, and in February, 
1874, the legislature of Massachusetts put itself on 
record as regretting its mistake, and, by a great majority, 
rescinded the resolution of censure. 

" The folly of the extra session of 1872 is wiped out 
thoroughly," wrote Whittier, joyfully. 

A prominent negro of Boston, the lifelong friend of 
Sumner, hastened to Washington with the official news, 
and presented copies of the action of Massachusetts to 
her representatives at the capital. The senator's victory 
was complete. But his only words were : " I have 
nothing to say. The dear old commonwealth has 
spoken for me, and that is enough." 

The word of Massachusetts came just in time. The 
day on which its rescinding resolution was announced 
to the Senate of the United States was Charles Sumner's 
last day in the Senate, of which he had so long been a 
member. It was his last day on earth. 

The very next day he died, the iith of March, 
1874. A son of the republic, a son of the common- 
wealth, his duty on earth was done. Almost his last 



240 

words were to his friend Judge Hoar of Massachusetts, 
still thinking of his Hfe work : " Take care of my bill, my 
Civil Rights Bill." Then the last breath passed; and 
Judge Hoar, who held his friend's hand, laid it tenderly 
down, and said solemnly : " Well done, good and faithful 
servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!" 



HOW THE CHILDREN HONORED THE 
POET. 



WHEN General George Washington, on a February- 
day in I 7 76, walked into his study in the Craigie 
house, at Cambridge, he was cheered by a glad surprise. 
It was his birthday, and as his best present came Colo- 
nel Henry Knox, the Boston bookseller, with tidings 
that he had safely sledded across the snow from Canada 
fifty cannon, with ammunition and supplies for the 

American army besieg- 
ing Boston. 

It was precisely the 
birthday present that 
Washington most de- 
sired. *' Nothing could 




Brooks's bay sta. — 16 241 



242 



be more apropos," he exclaimed joyfully. And then 
he went to work to drive the British from Boston. 

One hundred and three years later, on a February 
day in 1879, another dearly loved and famous American 
walked into the same study in the same Cambridge 
house, to be greeted with an equally glad surprise. 

It was the seventy-second birthday of Henry Wads- 
worth Longfellow, owner and occupant of that historic 
Craigie house which had been the headquarters of 
Washington during the siege of Boston. And in that 
pleasant front room that was his as it had been Wash- 
ington's study, the " white 
Mr. Longfellow," as the great 
Norwegian writer called him, 
spied something new, — a big 
armchaif, cleverly framed and 
artistically carved, in the seat 
of which was sunk a brass 
plate upon which this greet- 
ing was inscribed : *' To the 
author of ' The Village Black- 
smith' this chair, made from 
the wood of the * spreading 
chestnut tree,' is presented as 
an expression of grateful regard and veneration by the 
children of Cambridge, who, with their friends, join in 
the best wishes and congratulations on this anniversary, 
February 27, 1879." 

Seven hundred boys and girls had joined forces to 
present to the beloved poet this gracious token of their 
affection. It was also a memorial of the famous " spread- 




Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 



243 



ing chestnut tree " of Brattle Street in Cambridge, under 
which, for so many years, had stood the " village smithy " 
which Longfellow's verse had made known to seventy 
times seven hundred American school children. 

It was, in its way, as agreeable a surprise to him as 
Colonel Knox's ox loads of cannon and shot had been 
to Washington,— though one was the emblem of war 
and action, while the other spoke of peace and ease. 
And if you wish to know how appropriate Longfellow 
considered the gift, take down his poems, and turn to 
the verses which he entitled " From my Arm-chair," and 
which begin : 

" Am I a king, that I should call my own 
This splendid ebon throne ? " 

At that time Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was es- 
teemed the children's poet, the king of American bards, 
the fruitage of all those long 
years of Massachusetts genius 
and thought and culture which 
culminated in the four eminent 
American and Massachusetts 
poets who stood beside the 
open grave of their common 
friend Charles Sumner in 
Mount Auburn, when Massa- 
chusetts laid her champion to 
rest, — Longfellow, Whittier, 
Emerson, and Holmes. 

That chair still stands in the 
poet's study in Craigie house ; and if one of the boys 
or girls who know so many of the ennobling poems of 




Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



244 

Longfellow could sit in that carven chair, and with closed 
eyes could look back along the years of Massachusetts's 
literary growth, what would be seen? 

Something should be seen from it, certainly. It was 
a magic chair, if we may trust Longfellow's own words : 

" The Danish king could not, in all his pride, 
Repel the ocean tide ; 
But, seated in this chair, I can, in rhyme, 
Roll back the tide of Time»" 

So, seated in that magic chair, the boy or girl who 
looks into the past should be able to " roll back the 
tide of Time," and exclaim, with the poet, its owner: 
" I see again as one in vision sees!" What would he 
see? 

A long procession of earnest, gifted, and laborious 
workers with the pen — Massachusetts men and women, 
all — coming out of the past and filing before the youth- 
ful watcher in the chair, — the twentieth-century boy or 
girl, for whose enlightenment, education, and culture 
these men and women of the commonwealth have all 
recorded, reasoned, romanced, taught, or sung. 

First, the heralds, trumpeting forth in martial or in 
soberer strains the merits of Massachusetts as a home 
for those across the sea: doughty Captain John Smith, 
with dinted corselet and battered morion, equally handy 
with the sword or pen, writing down with the latter : '' Of 
all the parts of the world I have yet seen not inhabited, 
I would rather live here than anywhere; " gentle Wil- 
liam Bradford, the Moses of the wilderness, the second 
governor of Plymouth colony, writing the first history 



245 

of Massachusetts almost before there was any Massa- 
chusetts to write the history of; stately John Winthrop, 
first governor of Massachusetts Bay, proclaiming that 
Massachusetts was " a paradise," and writing that noble 
essay on liberty, at once patriotic and eloquent, in which 
he said : '' This liberty is the proper end and object of 
authority. . . . This liberty you are to stand for, with 
the hazard, not only of your goods, but of your lives, if 
need be." And so the heralds pass. 

Then come, with slow and solemn steps, in black 
Geneva cloaks and starched white bands, the ministers of 
the colony, well meaning but tyrannical teachers, writ- 
ing little that is palatable or digestible in these gentler 
days of wider love and broader brotherhood, but with 
an enthusiasm for learning and a fervor of expression 
that entered into the education of the people and laid 
the foundation for a permanent and broadening culture 
when the tyranny of theology should at last be broken : 
John Cotton and Roger Williams, Nathaniel Ward and 
Michael Wigglesworth, and those two pompous but stal- 
wart preachers, half prophets of liberty, Increase and 
Cotton Mather, tireless and often tiresome writers. 
Among these preachers walks the figure of a woman, — 
the first American woman writer and poet. Mistress 
Anne Bradstreet, who called herself, with a- quaint ego- 
tism, ''the tenth muse," possibly because she thought 
the other nine would not recognize her as really a 
member, of their tuneful sisterhood. 

Here, too, in that somewhat somber throng are the 
businesslike figures of the recorder Johnson, the " father 
of Woburn," and the grim soldier. Captain Mason, 



246 

leader and historian of the Pequot War; John EHot, 
*' apostle to the Indians" and translator of the famous 
Indian Bible ; Matthew Byles of Boston, wit, preacher, 
and poet ; jolly Peter Folger of Nantucket, grandfather 
of Franklin ; sad-eyed Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster, 
who told the story of her Indian captivity ; Samuel 
Sewell, judge and diarist, as great a gossip as the Eng- 
lishman Pepys; and closing that long line of stern 
teachers of a sterner morahty, the greatest and sternest, 
the wisest and deepest of them all, Jonathan Edwards, 
the great preacher of Northampton, to whom a kindlier 
age has reared a monument at pleasant Stockbridge. 
So the pioneers pass. 

Then follows the line of new Americans, whose pens, 
somewhat uncertain in rhythm or stilted in story, open 
the way to wider and nobler views of life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. In the van walks Dr. Ben- 
jamin Franklin, greatest, wisest, noblest of them all, 
ever a loyal son of Massachusetts and his '* dear Bos- 
ton," though the most of his wonderful life was passed 
in Philadelphia. Essayists, orators, and statesmen fol- 
low the portly doctor: James Otis, fiery and fearless; 
Samuel Adams, dauntless and forcible ; John Trumbull, 
the wit of the Revolution, who studied law with John 
Adams, and there wrote his greatest satire, " McFin- 
gal;" fussy old John Adams, himself the prince of let- 
ter-writers and most unselfish of patriots; Jonathan 
Mayhew, whose sermons and essays were called the 
''morning gun of the Revolution;" Joseph Warren, the 
orator of the Boston Massacre and most famous victim 
of Bunker Hill ; Thomas Hutchinson, royalist governor 



247 

and historian, whose better quaHties are only now be- 
coming rediscovered ; and two w^omen to close the train 
— Phyllis Wheatley, the remarkable Boston slave girl 
and poet, complimented by Washington, and IVIercy 
Warren, the intrepid sister of James Otis and first his- 
torian of the Revolution. 

So they pass ; but, as they go, they unroll before the 
dreamer in the magic chair their greatest, noblest 
work, the State Constitution of Massachusetts, and her 
Declaration of Rights, written while yet England rode 
rough-shod through the war-swept colonies, — '* a worthy 
monument," says Mr. Goddard, *'to the intellectual ele- 
vation of the statesman who modeled and the people who 
accepted it,"^John Adams being its '* chief architect." 

Enter the new republic, and with it the writers of 
the free commonwealth of Massachusetts. They come 
in meager numbers, for the first years of independence 
and nation-building gave but little time for writing or 
story-making. And yet two story-tellers lead, women 
both of them, — Hannah Foster of Brighton, who wrote 
the sentimental ** Coquette," and Susannah Rowson, the 
Newton school-teacher, with her tearful tale of '* Char- 
lotte Temple." Quite the opposite of these sentimental 
ladies, now comes William Tudor with his " North 
American Review," in which Massachusetts men, later 
famous in letters, wrote with strength, though some- 
times, so young people might think, they were " mighty 
dry." John Quincy Adams, President, patriot, essayist, 
and poet, is in the van, short, stout, and always active, 
with Joseph Story (pen couched like a lance to charge 
against Thomas Jefferson) and Jared Sparks, first of 



248 

American writers of popular history and biography, to 
whom all later writers on American history owe a last- 
ing debt. Two women follow these : Hannah Adams, 
with her '* History of New England," first to be used as 
a schoolbook, and Catherine Sedgwick, whose ** Hope 
LesHe " was once dear to thousands of children. After 
them walk two once famous poets, Richard Henry Dana, 
who wrote the "Buccaneer" and discovered Bryant, 
and Charles Sprague with his Shakspere Ode, followed 
by John Pierpont, the hymn-writer, and three friends 
of children whose names the story-crammed boys and 
girls of America still know and reverence, — -Lydia Maria 
Child, Peter Parley (whose real name was Samuel G. Good- 
rich), and Jacob Abbott, creator of the '' Rollo Books." 
Then, with a triumphant burst of welcoming music, 
that startles even the dreamer in the magic chair, enter 
the last and best, — the giants of this passing show, the 
top and crown of the Old Bay State's two centuries of 
literary growth. The names alone startle the ear, 
brighten the eye, and set the heart astir; for what boy 
or girl does not think of them with veneration and awe, 
and wish he might have seen those heroes of the 
pen? — those clear-eyed reformers Channing, Garrison, 
Parker, and Phillips ; those wise and practical philoso- 
phers and thinkers Emerson, Alcott, Thoreau, and Mar- 
garet Fuller; those stirring historians Bancroft and 
Motley, Ticknor and Parkman and Prescott ; those 
splendid orators Webster, Sumner, and Everett; those 
matchless story-tellers Hawthorne and Louisa Alcott 
and Harriet Beecher Stowe ; those greatest of Ameri- 
can poets Bryant and Whittier, Holmes and Lowell, 



249 



and, the prince of them all, Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow, in whose magic birthday chair at Craigie house 
our overfilled dreamer is just now 
waking up. 

They are Massachusetts men and 
women all ! What other little patch 
of earth of eighty-three hundred 
square miles can show so noble, so 
triumphal a procession? Is it not 
enough to stir boys and girls to deep 
and grateful thoughts, whether Mas- 
sachusetts or Montana, Boston or 
New Orleans, be their home? — for 
all were, as are they, Americans. 

Wake up! young dreamer in the 
children's magic chair. Pass from one yellow colonial 
house to another, from one Revolutionary headquarters 
to another, from one poet's home to another, from Long- 
fellow's at Craigie house to Lowell's at Elmwood. 

And, as you pass from the home of America's most 
famous poet to that of America's foremost man of letters, 
pause at the old-fashioned gate of Elmwood, and say, as 
did Longfellow, standing on that very spot: 




John Greenleaf Whittier. 



Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, 

Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, 

Some one hath lingered to meditate 

And send him unseen this friendly greeting; 



" That many another hath done the same, 

Though not by a sound was the silence broken. 
The surest pledge of a deathless name 

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken." 



HOW THE MAN WITH EIGHTY THOU- 
SAND CHILDREN BROUGHT THEM UP. 

WHEN the nineteenth century was young, there 
Uved in the Httle town of Frankhn, Massachu- 
setts, a small and sensitive boy. 

Life was hard for small boys in those days. Parents 
were stern and unsympathetic, and this small boy's 
home was one of poverty and privation. If he wished 
a play hour, he must work for it; if he desired a book, 
— even a schoolbook, — he must work for it. With a 
natural love for the refined and the beautiful, he was 
surrounded by influences which tended to make life 
hard, repressed, narrow, and unlovely. 

Yet, out of even harsher surroundings sprang Abra- 
ham Lincoln, greatest of Americans. This small boy of 
Franklin grew to be a power in the world. On the fifth 
day of May, 1896, those Massachusetts boys and girls 
who were blind and deaf, as well as those who could 
see and hear, celebrated the one hundredth anniversary 
of his birth ; for out of that pinched and narrow Puri- 
tan home in Franklin came the lad who more than all 
others was to become the benefactor of American boys 
and girls, — Horace Mann, the educator. 

It is, indeed, repression and deprivation which, in 
characters naturally strong, sometimes bring out both 

250 



251 

purpose and performance. Horace Mann was frail 
in body, but strong in heart. When bright things 
were denied him, he dreamed bright things. He had 
no desire to be rich or famous or powerful, but he did 
wish to do something helpful and noble ; and his air 
castles, such as all thoughtful or ambitious boys love to 
build, were not material, but intellectual structures; 
that is, he did not dream of doing something great for 
himself, but rather something that should be of benefit 
to mankind. 

His air castles proved real ; his dreams did come 
true. Health, strength, and life itself he built into his 
work in behalf of his race, and became alike the father 
and the founder of that system of popular education 
which made itself a part of the very fabric of Massachu- 
setts, and went out into the other States of the Union as 
the broad and noble public-school system of America. 

There never was a harder worker. He was obliged 
to be one in that pleasure-lacking home in Franklin, 
and he said of himself, " Owing to these ingrained 
habits, work has always been to me what water is to a 
fish." So, earnestly desiring learning, for which he had 
but little opportunity up to the time he was fifteen 
years old, he denied himself every luxury and pleasure 
that even his limited wishes craved until he had saved 
enough to enter college, and had nearly studied himself 
sick to do so. 

He graduated with the highest honors; he taught 
school, he studied law, and gradually he found his foot- 
ing in the world. But all the time he was trying to see 
what good he could do for his fellow-men. 



252 

He did much. People saw how wise and strong of 
brain and purpose this young man, so weak in body, 
really was. They gave him their respect, esteem, and 
confidence. They sent him to the Great and General 
Court, where he received, in 1836, the high honor of 
being elected president of the Senate ; they sent him 
to Congress in 1848, and the Free-soil party made him 
their candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1852. 

He succeeded John Quincy Adams as the representa- 
tive of Massachusetts in Congress, and succeeded also 
to all that earnest old patriot's love of liberty and intense 
desire for equal rights. 

But, in Horace Mann's view, equal rights had their 
foundation in education. "Save the children of Amer- 
ica from ignorance, and you save the republic," he said, 
" for in a republic ignorance is a crime; . . . and if we 
do not prepare children to become good citizens, . . . 
then our republic must go down to destruction, as others 
have gone before it." 

He did not intend that this should be possible, if he 
could do anything to prevent it ; so all his time and 
thought were devoted to working out his plans for the 
better education of the boys and girls of the common- 
wealth. 

Education in Massachusetts had gone through many 
ups and downs since first the Mayfloiver dropped anchor 
in Provincetown harbor, and Boston, in 1635, had agreed 
by vote that " our brother Philemon Pormort shall be 
entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and 
nurturing the children with us." Two hundred years 
later, in 1835, when Horace Mann tried to put new life 



253 

into its weak body, the scliool system of the Bay State 
was having one of its most serious downs. The equal 
school rights for all, which had been the plan of the 
Puritan founders of the commonwealth, had been allowed 
to sink into meagerly provided and most unequal priv- 
ileges. Poor schools for the poorer people were about 
all that the State provided. Teachers were as poor as 
the schools, and parents who desired anything like a 
decent education for their children sent them to the 
" pay schools," or ambitious academies, of which there 
were some good and some very poor ones in the State. 

Horace Mann saw the need that existed for popular 
education, — for schools that should be for all the people, 
rich and poor alike, for a better class of teachers, trained 
by wisest methods for their important work. 

He talked and labored, and he never rested in his 
labors. The imperfect and hampering system of dis- 
trict schools, run by the selectmen, which had fur- 
nished but a poor excuse for instruction for 3''ears, was 
attacked, a school fund created, and a Board of Educa- 
tion established. That all sounds simple ; but it was 
long and tedious, often disheartening and thankless, 
labor, trying to work up public opinion to this revival 
of education. 

When, in 1837, the State Board of Education was 
appointed " to revise and reorganize the common-school 
system of the State of Massachusetts," Horace Mann 
was appointed secretary. 

His friends told him he was foolish. He would 
never get rich at that business, they declared. But their 
selfish advice was unheeded. Horace Mann felt that 



254 

he had a mission in the world, and no money could 
tempt, no honors could lure him to neglect that mission. 

" I have accepted the office," he wrote to a friend. 
** If I do not succeed in it, I will lay claim at least to 
the benefit of the saying that in great attempts it is 
glorious to fail." 

But he did not fail. He succeeded gloriously. For 
twelve years he served as secretary of the Board of 
Education ; indeed, he zvas the Board of Education. 
To do its work he gave up his profession of the law, he 
resigned his seat in the Massachusetts legislature. His 
duty was to enlighten the people, and arouse in them a 
desire for better teachers, better schools, and, therefore, 
better men and women to be developed from the chil- 
dren that teachers and schools would bend and train. 

He was tireless in his energy ; he was exhaustless in 
his plans. During those twelve years he worked fifteen 
hours every day. He talked, he wrote, he lectured, he 
held teachers' conventions, he started a school journal for 
the better diffusion of his ideas, and he published annual 
reports which were the best statements and advocates of 
the cause of popular education that America had ever 
seen, and which, since his day, have rarely been surpassed. 

He started the State normal schools for the educa- 
tion of teachers ; he aroused, in the face of constant 
opposition and criticism, a new public spirit that turned 
the indifference of the people into interest, and led them 
finally to recognize and appreciate the valuable work 
which this earnest and tireless man had done. 

It was not easy work. It was hard, uphill work. 
Even the children for whom he labored rebelled, while 



255 
the teachers he sought to improve grumbled or "wouldn't 

play." 

But nothing ever daunted this determined man. Once, 
when he went off to Pittsfield, among the Berkshire Hills, 
to hold a " teachers' institute," or convention, he reached 
the town, in the morning, only to find that no arrange- 
ments had been made, and that the schoolhouse in which 
the institute was tobe held was in no presentable condition. 






The governor of 
the State was with 
him, for Governor 
George Briggs had 
been converted by 
the practical views 
of the earnest secre- 
tary ; and when the 




256 

governor saw in what condition was the schoolhouse, 
and how dull was the interest in the wise plans of 
Horace Mann, both he and Mr. Mann were determined 
to conquer what the secretary called " the arctic regions 
of Pittsfield " (because of its lack of interest) ; so, while 
the secretary was ''putting things to rights," the gov- 
ernor made a raid on the nearest dwelling house, bor- 
rowed two brooms, and when the aroused and curious 
inhabitants strolled into the schoolhouse, they stood 
open-eyed with wonder to see the governor of the com- 
monwealth qf Massachusetts and the secretary of the 
State Board of Education sweeping and dusting the 
schoolroom, so that everything might be presentable 
when the hour for the institute arrived. 

Horace Mann felt very tender and loving toward the 
school children of Massachusetts whom he was trying to 
improve. " My eighty thousand children," he called 
them, and he labored persistently to bring them up so 
that they should be an honor to the State and a power 
for good in the republic whose citizens they were to be. 
How well he succeeded the patriotism of Massachusetts 
in the war days that so tried and tested it was to prove, 
while the work he did for them was to bear fruit, even 
beyond his own expectations, in the position which 
Massachusetts assumed, and still holds, in the van alike 
of popular education and of higher education in America. 

There are in the State of Massachusetts ten thousand 
public schools and thirteen thousand teachers. Horace 
Mann's eighty thousand children have increased to more 
than four hundred thousand. Of the thirteen thousand 
teachers nearly five thousand are graduates of the nor- 



257 

mal schools started by Horace Mann. The support of 
the pubhc schools of Massachusetts costs the State over 
eleven millions of dollars, but this is the one item of 
taxation and expenditure at which the citizens of the 
Bay State never grumble. For the education of the 
children is the salvation of the State. Besides this pub- 
lic-school census, there are also in Massachusetts more 
than sixty thousand scholars taught in one hundred 
academies and three hundred and sixty private and 
parochial schools, at a cost of nearly seven hundred 
thousand dollars, while a dozen chartejed colleges, 
headed by the great Harvard University, with special 
schools devoted to industrial, technical, art, business, 
musical, and professional instruction, complete the roster 
of the educational facilities of Massachusetts at the close 
of the nineteenth century. 

And this advance is due very largely to the patience, 
the persistence, the determination, and the courage of 
the man who, in spite of all obstacles, — indifference, 
parsimony, *'old-fogyism," and political antagonisms, — 
worked steadily on to accomplish a purpose which had 
become at once the plan and dream of his life since first 
in that poor home in Franklin a repressed small boy 
made up his mind to do some good in the world. 

He did it; and the visitor to Boston sees, in front of 
the Statehouse, in the shadow of the gilded dome, 
placed there by the school-children and school-teachers 
of Massachusetts, for whom his life was spent, a bronze 
statue of the loving father of eighty thousand children, 
— Horace Mann, educator, patriot, American. 

Brooks's bay sta. — 17 



HOW THEY BORED THROUGH A MOUN- 
TAIN IN BERKSHIRE. 

WHEN the energetic William Pynchon blazed the 
Bay Path in the days when young Sir Harry 
Vane sat in the governor's chair, he laid the trail for travel 
to the West which for more than two hundred and fifty 
years has been a main artery in the direct route from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. From garrison to block- 
house, from village to village, from town to town, from 
city to city, the highway ran the length of the common- 
wealth, linking the settlements in their growth from 
blockhouse to city, from colonial days to modern times. 

Thus Boston was linked to Albany, the ocean to the 
Hudson, and the trade to and from the interior passed 
over the main highway, crossing the rivers in clumsy 
horse boats, climbing the Berkshire b)^ toilsome ascents, 
until at last men thought to improve upon this slow and 
tedious travel by some more direct and labor-saving 
method. 

The first step toward improvement came from a col- 
lege boy out amid the Berkshires. In the year 1806, 
when Napoleon was master of Europe and Aaron Burr 
was seeking to disrupt America, a young senior in Wil- 
liams College came upon an account of the way coal 
was transported in the English coal regions by what 

258 



259 

were called tramways, or crude wooden railways. This 
college boy was Abner Phelps of Boston ; and the coal- 
ing tramways suggested to him the idea of some such 
m.ethod of communication between Massachusetts Bay 
and the Hudson River, along the old Bay Path. 

The plan attracted him strongly, and in 1808 he wrote 
to his brother, who was in the Massachusetts legislature, 
asking if he could not propose in the legislature a tram- 
way from Boston to Albany. 

" Make it a great State road," wrote young Abner 
Phelps to his brother. ** The counties make roads ; 
why not let the State make one? . . . The people had 
better talk on such a subject than to be always discuss- 
ing politics to no profit. . . . Were I in the legislature, 
I should not hesitate, but would move it as the first 
subject of attention." 

The brother of this energetic and far-seeing young 
man did hesitate, and the suggestion was not taken up. 
The idea, however, lay in young Phelps's mind, and 
years after, in 1826, when he himself had become "a 
rising man," and was sent to the legislature, the very 
first thing he did was to present a proposition for a rail- 
way from Boston to the Hudson River near Albany. 

The legislature of Massachusetts had already dis- 
cussed the project of building a canal from Boston to 
the Connecticut River, and another one from the Con- 
necticut to the Hudson, so as to unite with the great 
Erie Canal, which had just been opened across the Em- 
pire State from the Hudson to the Great Lakes. Two 
routes had even been surveyed, and one might have 
been decided upon, skirting the valleys of the Deerfield 



26o 

and Hoosac rivers, were it not that right in the path rose 
one great and insurmountable obstacle, — the high and 
picturesque barrier of Hoosac Mountain in Berkshire 
County. 

Suddenly railroads actually came into existence, — 
something quite different from the crude tramways of 
the English coal country, — and at once the canal project 
gave place to the railway project of Dr. Abner Phelps, 
" a railroad man before the days of railroads," as he has 
been called. 

His proposition in the legislature was acted upon at 
once, and a commission was appointed to survey a route 
from Boston to Albany. Three were proposed, one of 
them the same as the canal route which was blocked by 
Hoosac Mountain. Another was selected, however, and 
the old Bay Path became the Boston and Albany Rail- 
road, — not entirely completed, however, until 1842. 
Thirty-six years had that college boy to wait before his 
dream came true. 

The State was growing fast by this time, however, and 
the people of northern Massachusetts wished a road 
across the State that should be of value to their section 
of the commonwealth. The old canal route that skirted 
the Deerfield and Hoosac valleys was again thought of. 
But there still stood Hoosac Mountain. 

" How can one carry a railroad over Hoosac Moun- 
tain?" the people asked; and some enthusiast boldly 
replied, "Tunnel it." 

It seemed a foolish answer. It was in those days to 
most people clearly an impossibility to bore through a 
great hill, two thousand feet high and five miles thick 



26l 

at the base, formed of tough slate rock, and full of 
unknown obstacles. 

But some brave and determined minds thought differ- 
ently. Interest in the great project was slowly awak- 
ened, and after six years of waiting and arguing, a survey 
was made for a tunnel in 1850, and on January i, 185 i, 
it was decided to begin work. 

From the very beginning of the actual work, however, 
things seemed to go wrong. The legislature refused to 
give State aid by a loan of money, and capitalists who 
had money to invest did not believe in the scheme 
enough to lend the funds. A little was raised, however, 
and a tunneling machine built, which broke down hope- 
lessly before ten feet of the mountain had been cut out. 
Then things dragged and delayed until 1854, when the 
legislature voted money for the enterprise, and work 
was once more begun. 

Again troubles came, — with machinery, with money, 
and with men. Contractors failed, machinery proved 
useless, money gave out, and finally the company formed 
to build the tunnel had to give up, and the whole affair 
came into the hands of the commonwealth. 

The year 1862 came along, and not a fifth part of the 
proposed tunnel had been cut out; for the boring 
machines had all proved failures, the ventilation was bad, 
and blasting was very dangerous. 

Just then a clever inventor of Fitchburg, Charles 
Burleigh by name, invented a new kind of drill, to be 
driven by steam or compressed air, and known as the 
percussion drill. This drill could make three hundred 
strokes a minute. 



2^2 

This compressed-air rock drill came just at the right 
time ; for, staggered by the slowness and vastness of 
the work before them, and the increasing item of ex- 
pense, the engineer, as a last resort, had decided to sink 
a central shaft, and, w^hen this was sunk, to work each 
way and bore out to daylight. But to sink this shaft 
would alone take four years of hard work, and cost over 
half a million dollars. 

So Mr. Burleigh's invention of the rock drill worked 
by compressed air came just in time, for already this 
central shaft had been begun. From 1856 to 1866 all 
the rock-drilling — and there was a tremendous amount 
of rock to bore through in Hoosac Mountain — had 
been done by hand ; but after 1866, thanks to the rock 
drill, and the great benefits it gave in power and fresh 
air, the work went forward rapidly, and, as one authority 
assures us, *' the building of great tunnels rose to the 
dignity of a science." 

The central shaft was sunk, the Deerfield River was 
dammed and water power secured to work the east-side 
drills, while on the west side and at the central shaft 
steam engines worked the drills and supplied the air for 
the western section. 

But although the new rock drill helped things won- 
derfully, it could not do away with all the difficulties. 
Crumbling rock and oozing water so impeded the work 
that, in one working year, over three hundred thousand 
tons of water had to be pumped out of the central shaft, 
and nearly fourteen thousand tons of rock lifted from it 
in buckets. Terrible accidents occurred to the work- 
men by explosions and fire, and many wonderful escapes 



263 

are recorded. Nearly two hundred lives were lost 
while the tunnel was building, and the workmen, some- 
times a thousand in number, lived year after year in the 
'midst of the terrible risks from explosives. 

Of these, the powerful nitroglycerin, which was dis- 
covered before the tunnel was finished, was a great aid 
toward speedier completion, for nitroglycerin is thirteen 
times more powerful than blasting powder. 

Perhaps you think it needs only patience and plenty 
of drilling and digging to bore a tunnel through a 
mountain. But these are the simplest things. Think 
of the figurirtg and planning needed to strike just the 
right measurements so that the tunnel shall run straight 
and came out. at the right place! That central shaft 
had to be dug down, true and plumb, for over a thou- 
sand feet into pitch darkness ; then, still in that hor- 
rible darkness, the engineers had to strike out right and 
left so as to meet the men who were boring toward 
the central shaft from east and west. Now read this 
triumph of brain as displayed in this great piece of 
tunneling. When the men from the central shaft had 
tunneled eastward sixteen hundred feet, they met the 
men working in from the eastern entrance, eleven thou- 
sand feet from the opening; and they met exactly, so 
that the final blast which threw down the last wall of 
intervening rock brought the workmen from the east 
and west face to face in the heart of that lofty moun- 
tain. Before the work was done the length of the tun- 
nel had been estimated by the engineers from the 
measurements they made in climbing over the moun- 
tain and marking it off with a tapeline ; and when the 



264 

tunnel was finished, so accurate was this estimate that 
the actual length of the tunnel was found to come within 
a foot of the estimate. Such accuracy was simply mar- 
velous. But these are the things that are taught 
American boys to-day in such scientific schools of the 
Bay State as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
the schools of mines connected with the Massachusetts 
colleges, and the Free Institute of Industrial Science at 
Worcester. A boy with brains can to-day learn to do 
almost anything in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

The final explosion that threw over the last remaining 
wall of rock between the eastern and western workers 
was made on the 27th of November, 1873. On the 9th 
of February, 1875, the first cars passed through, roofs 
and arches and roadbed being completed. Twenty-two 
freight cars loaded with grain from the West were run 
through on the 5th of April, 1875; passenger trains 
between Boston and Troy soon followed ; and on the ist 
of July, 1876, in the jubilee month of the nation's cen- 
tennial year, one of the greatest feats of engineering skill 
the world had ever known was formally proclaimed as 
completed, and the Hoosac Tunnel, after twenty-two 
years of difficulties, dela3^s, obstacles, and defeats, per- 
sistence, endeavor, and triumph, was declared finished. 

The Hoosac Tunnel was the first of the great moun- 
tain tunnels of the world. It was built for the public 
accommodation and for peaceful purposes, — not, like the 
great tunnels of Europe, with any thought of political 
or military significance. It is four and three quarter 
miles long; it is twenty-six feet wide and twenty-six feet 
high ; it is perfectly ventilated by three great shafts, the 



265 




central one of which is twenty-seven feet wide, and runs 
up ten hundred and twenty-eight feet, opening out at 
the very summit of the mountain. The tunnel is lighted 
by twelve hundred and fifty electric lights, and is built 
in the most thorough and substantial manner. It should 
be, for it cost over twenty millions of dollars. 

That sum might have been expended in widening and 
improving the great trunk line to which this tunnel 
route is rival and competitor; but the Hoosac Tunnel 
route has been of incalculable service to the people of 
Massachusetts, New England, and the United States, as 
the great freight- and passenger-carrying artery between 
the East and the West. It is a monument to patience, 
persistence, perseverance, skill, and figuring, — what we 
call a tangible triumph of mind over matter. 



266 

The forerunner of all the great railroads that gridiron 
the United States of America was the crude and clumsy 
tramway built in 1826 between the granite quarries at 
Quincy in Massachusetts and tide water at Neponset, 
three miles away. The first of all the great tunnels that 
made possible the extension of American railroads in 
spite of mountain barriers was the Hoosac Tunnel. And 
out of those two triumphs of Yankee pluck and Massa- 
chusetts persistence the republic can boast its millions 
of miles of railroad and billions of dollars of railroad 
capital. 

How many other triumphs of ingenuity, persistence, 
skill, and financiering have made the men of Massa- 
chusetts famous, and contributed to the progress, the 
strength, and the glory of the republic? Let us see. 

The story of Bay State enterprise would far exceed 
the limits of this book ; but even though it look like a 
catalogue or a directory, let me give you a partial table 
of " first things " which originated in Massachusetts, that 
you may know how much the men . of the common- 
wealth have contributed toward the world's convenience, 
comfort, and progress. 

Everybody knows that Samuel F. B. Morse of Charles- 
town invented the electric telegraph and brought the 
nations of the world into touch with each other. So, 
as I shall tell you in the next chapter, Alexander Gra- 
ham Bell of Boston invented the telephone and set all 
the world a- talking; and it was Eli Whitney of West- 
borough who invented the cotton gin, and, as Macaulay 
asserted, did as much for the power and progress of the 
United States as Peter the Great did for Russia. We 



267 

know that it was Benjamin Franklin, a Boston boy, 
who discovered electricity in the clouds, and Benjamin 
Thompson, a Woburn boy, who, as Count Rumford, 
almost revolutionized the knowledge of the world as to 
the powers of light and heat. 

These are the great names known to all the world, and 
to the great glory of Massachusetts. But others, less 
known, have proved of equal worth and value to the 
world. 

Paul Revere of Boston, who made the famous ride, 
started the first mill for making sheet copper; Jacob 
Perkins of Newburyport patented the first nail ma- 
chine and made the first steel-plate engraving; Abel 
Stowell of Worcester first cut screws by machinery ; 
Isaac Babbitt of Taunton invented Babbitt metal and 
Britannia ware ; James Conant of Marblehead first 
made sewing silk by machinery ; Joseph Dixon of 
Salem made the first American lead pencils; Alonzo 
D. Phillips of Springfield made the first friction 
matches ; William F. Harnden of Boston started the 
first express company ; John Ames of Springfield made 
the first machine for making, cutting, and ruling paper; 
William G. T. Morton of Boston discovered the won- 
derful pain-killing properties of ether; Charles G. Page 
of Salem made the first suggestion of the telephone ; 
Seth Adams of Dorchester started the first breeding of 
merino sheep for the fine wool industry of America; 
James Campbell of Boston published the first American 
newspaper ; Isaac Stoughton of Dorchester built the first 
water mill for grinding corn in New England ; David 
Melville of Watertown first lighted factories with gas; 



268 

Stephen Daye of Cambridge was the first book pub- 
Hsher in America; John Schofield of Newburyport 
made the first carding machine for woolen manufacture ; 
Charles Mitchell of Boston started the food-canning in- 
dustry ; Theodore Pearson of Newburyport was the first 
cracker baker ; Frederic Tudor of Boston started the 
American ice business; Edward Chaffee of Roxbury 
was the first india rubber manufacturer; John Har- 
mon of Boston was the first rope-maker in America ; 
the first clocks were made by Simon Willard of Rox- 
bury, the first American watches by Aaron L. Denni- 
son and Edward Howard of Roxbury ; Thomas Beard 
of the Plymouth colony was the first American shoe- 
maker, and William F. Trowbridge of Feltonville first 
made shoes by steam-power machinery. 

This does not complete the list, but it is sufficient to 
indicate what part Massachusetts has borne in the in- 
dustrial progress of the nation. 

There was a time when Massachusetts, like Britannia, 
''ruled the wave," so far as the number of her ships 
and the wealth of her seaports were concerned. From 
1840 to i860 Massachusetts ships controlled the com- 
merce-bearing trade of the world. But gradually the 
conditions changed ; navigation gave place to manufac- 
ture, and Massachusetts, which had developed the re- 
sources of the sea, turned her attention to railroads and 
manufacturing, and developed the resources of the land. 

After the Revolution, and when the new nation was 
forming, the commonwealth, relinquishing its claims 
to the vast sections of western land which, under its 
charter from the King of England, were its ceded pos- 



269 

sessions, enabled the government to throw open those 
lands for settlement. The sons of Massachusetts, seeing 
more of agricultural promise in those fertile western 
lands, left the old home for the new, and thus Massa- 
chusetts by giving up its own became really the mother 
of new States. To the development of those splendid 
western commonwealths, as you have read in the story 
of Rufus Putnam and the second Mayfloiver, Massa- 
chusetts contributed in land, in men, in methods, in 
money, and in means of communication ; following the 
Bay Path of William Pynchon's day, and the later trail 
of the northern counties, she even pushed her iron high- 
way straight through the very heart of that Berkshire 
mountain, and. thus linked the commerce and manufac- 
tures of the East to the vast resources of the West. 



HOW ONE MAN SET THE WORLD 
A-TALKING. 

IN the year 1874 there Hved in Boston a young Scotch- 
man who was a teacher of vocal physiology in the 
Boston University. His name was Alexander Graham 
Bell. 

Vocal physiology teaches what the voice is and how 
to use it properly, and for years this young Scotchman's 
father and grandfather had been devoting their time and 
talents, in Edinburgh, so to adapt this science of vocal 
physiology as to enable them to teach deaf-mutes to 
speak, — the same educational charity that engaged the 
attention of Horace Mann in the midst of his labors in 
behalf of popular education. 

This young Scotchman of Boston had also made a 
careful and thorough study of this wonderful philan- 
thropy, and, with some knowledge of electricity, he was 
attempting to invent some method of transmitting har- 
monious sounds, — perhaps even words and speech. 

This young man, who earned his living by teaching 
sound people the right use of the voice, and deaf people 
how to speak, had no money to develop his valuable 
ideas. If he could get money enough, he wished to 
take out a patent on what he called his harmonic tele- 
graph, — that is, telegraphing by sounds, or vibrations. 

270 



271 

This seemed to be a practical thing, and young Bell 
found that certain men whose children he taught were 
willing to lend him money enough to take out a patent 
and perfect his invention. But they laughed at his 
dream of transmitting speech, — his telephone, as he 
called it, an instrument for hearing and returning far- 
oflf sounds. That, they declared, was a crazy scheme. 

But Bell was so interested in his inventions, and had 
so much faith in them, that he determined to risk 
everything on their success. He gave up his teaching 
so as to have plenty of time for his own work ; he mort- 
gaged his services as a teacher to be delivered when 
he had finished his experiments ; he lived almost on 
bread and water so as to have all his money for his one 
idea, and, in a Boston garret, set to work to perfect his 
invention. 

His father had a system of what is known as " visible 
speech," — that is, teaching those to speak who are 
dumb only because they are deaf, by showing them 
things which they learn to know, or, as one might say, 
teaching them to talk by sight. It had proved very 
successful, but Alexander Graham Bell believed he 
could go a step further, and teach them to use the 
voice and even to talk intelligibly. His experiments in 
this direction interested him in the transmission of 
sounds, and out of this came, slowly and imperfectly, 
what he called ** speech transference, the telephone, the 
talking telegraph." 

All that year he worked away at his idea, — unsuccess- 
fully, so he thought. He talked with people interested 
in electrical science, and they all said that, though his 



272 

ideas were good, something seemed lacking, and that 
the talking telegraph could never be made practical. 

But he believed that it could ; and he meant that it 
should some day. Further experiments were necessary ; 
but he had no money to enable him to make them, and 
there were few who believed sufficiently in his ideas to 
help him with funds. 

"What shall I do?" he said, one day, to Dr. Henry, 
the director of the famous Smithsonian Institution at 
Washington. *' Fm afraid I have not enough electrical 
knowledge to overcome the difficulties." 

" Get it, then," Dr. Henry replied. 

Encouraged by this brief but practical advice, Bell 
determined that he would " get it," — although, as he 
declared, " flesh and blood could not stand much longer 
such a strain as I had on me." 

Still, Dr. Henry had said he thought he had ** the 
germ of a great invention," and even at the risk of 
starvation and breaking down, young Bell determined to 
work on. 

But success may be close at hand when we think it 
farthest away. Alexander Graham Bell had, even when 
things looked the darkest, really invented the telephone 
without knowing it. He knew his theory was right, 
but the application seemed somehow lacking. 

He discovered it by accident. One day, while experi- 
menting with his harmonic telegraph, which he had 
already patented, his assistant, at one end, happened to 
knock the transmitter while Bell, at the other end, was 
at the receiver. Bell heard the sound of the knock 
exactly as it was given. At once the truth flashed upon 



273 

him. " If an audible sound like that can be reproduced 
and transmitted," he said, "why cannot speech?" 

The telephone that he had invented in 1874, and 
which he and his friends believed to be impracticable, 
was proved most practical. 

"I'll keep at it," he said, "and have one made at 
once." 

But that was far from easy to do, although easy 
enough to say. He had neither money nor credit, and 
even though he believed in the telephone, others did 
not. He was involved in a lawsuit with another in- 
ventor over the rights in his harmonic telegraph. He 
could neither buy tools nor hire help. Everything 
seemed against him. 

" However," he wrote to his father, who lived in 
Canada, " Morse conquered his electrical difficulties, 
though he was only a painter, and I don't intend to give 
in, either, till all is completed." 

That was plucky, was it not? But Alexander Gra- 
ham Bell was just that. He was, too, an unconscious 
inventor. He had succeeded without knowing it. 

" My inexperience is my greatest drawback," he said. 
He knew what he desired to accomplish, but did not 
know how to undertake it. For that reason he could 
not get a patent on his telephone, because what he sent 
on to Washington was not definite enough to meet the 
patent office requirements, and, indeed, he very nearly 
lost all his rights by a rival claim. 

But he found an electrician in Boston who could put 
his ideas into practical shape, and In his shop the tele- 
phone was really invented. For this skilled workman 

BROOKS'S BAY STA. — 18 



274 

followed the directions which the unskilled inventor de- 
scribed in his specifications and explanations. His ap- 
plication was filed at Washington in February, 1876, 
and his patent was granted just in time to save his in- 
vention. 

Even then, however, success did not come at once. 
The invention must be demonstrated in the presence of 
scientific men, if the world was to accept it as a practical 
thing. 

This opportunity came at last. On the 26th of June, 
1876, at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, a 
number of electrical inventors had arranged a private 
" show " of their inventions for the benefit of some of 
the distinguished foreign visitors to the exhibition, — 
notably Dom Pedro, then Emperor of Brazil, and Sir 
William Thomson, the English scientist. 

It was a hot day, and the distinguished visitors were 
hungry ; but as a last ** show," they expressed a willing- 
ness to look at the newfangled idea which this young 
Boston Scotchman wished to show them. 

Bell had already rigged up his telephone line, and, 
sending his assistant to the transmitter, he placed the 
receiver at his ear, and repeated aloud to the audience 
what was said to him over the line. 

Instantly the visitors were wide awake; their hunger 
was forgotten ; they could not believe what was told them. 

" Try it yourselves, gentlemen," said Mr. Bell. 

Sir William Thomson did try it ; so did the Emperor 
of Brazil ; so did the other scientists and *' distinguished 
visitors." They talked and listened, replied and talked 
again, until even their skeptical minds were convinced, 



275 




and they believed, as Sir William Thomson told his broth- 
er scientists, when he returned to England, " it is by far 
the greatest of all the marvels of the electric telegraph." 

So Alexander Graham Bell leaped into fame at once. 
The penniless teacher of deaf-mutes became renowned 
and rich, although it was some time before all his fights 
with rival inventors were over, and the Supreme Court 
of the United States declared, on the 19th of March, 
1888, that Alexander Graham Bell was the real inventor 
of the telephone, and that '* none of the rival claimants 
had succeeded in transmitting human speech by the aid 
of electricity until Mr. Bell had shown the world how it 
could be done." 

To-day his marvelous creation is known and used all 
over the world. Men talk across miles of space, — a 
fact more marvelous than anything even the " Arabian 
Nights " can tell ; and the benefit and service which the 



276 

telephone has already been to the world are not to be 
calculated or expressed. 

And this was really a Massachusetts invention. It 
was not the first time the Old Bay State had led in the 
marvels of electrical invention. In the town of Boston 
was born, in 1 706, Benjamin Franklin, the pioneer of 
electricity, the man who, so France declared, ** snatched 
the thunderbolt from heaven and the scepter from 
tyrants ; " in Charlestown, just across the river, was born, 
in 1 79 1, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of 
the electric telegraph ; in the city of Lynn Professor 
Elihu Thomson developed and improved his wonder- 
ful system of electrical power that lights and moves the 
world ; and in Boston Alexander Graham Bell invented 
and perfected the greatest of electrical marvels, the 
telephone. 

To-day in the United States there are in use hun- 
dreds of thousands of miles of telegraph and thousands 
upon thousands of telephones. The business of the 
world could scarcely exist without them. Cables flash 
the news of each day's happenings beneath the seas. 
Chicago talks with Boston, New York with New Or- 
leans. And the possibilities of electricity have but just 
begun to be realized. 

In their services to humanity, to the progress of man- 
kind and the neighborliness of the world, none have 
done better or deserved more of the republic that es- 
teems and honors them than Franklin, Morse, and Bell, 
all three men of Massachusetts, brothers of the com- 
monwealth. 



HOW THE PROCLAMATION ENDS. 

WHEN I was a boy it was the custom for the minis- 
ter to read from his pulpit, the Sunday before 
Thanksgiving Day, the proclamation of the governor 
officially announcing and promulgating the glad day of 
thanksgiving. 

The proclamation always came as a big broadside, 
quite a formidable-looking sheet, as I remember it from 
the minister's front pew, and we boys and girls were 
properly impressed by it, and especially by the highly 
official way in which it closed, and the invocation and 
sentiment with which it ended : " God save the com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts! " 

In all the two hundred and seventy years of the Old 
Bay State's existence, as colony and commonwealth, 
many proclamations have been issued and read to the 
people who have, in their lives and actions, made Massa- 
chusetts a vital and impressive force in the world. For 
it is the people, after all, who make the state. As that 
grand old poem of Sir William Jones tells us: 

" Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,— 
These constitute a state." 

The men of Massachusetts have always known and 
appreciated their duties ; they have, from, the days of the 

277 



278 

freemen of Watertown, " dared their rights maintain;" 
and as a consequence the invocation of the old procla- 
mation has been answered, for God has blessed and 
saved the commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

To-day the golden-domed Statehouse, ringed with its 
triple coronet of electric lights, stands on its time-hon- 
ored hill, known and honored of all men throughout the 
land. Within its legislative chamber still hangs the 
golden codfish, symbol and reminder of the chief source 
of the Bay State's wealth and progress ; within its library 
is cherished the precious manuscript of that early gov- 
ernor and chronicler, which has been through the cen- 
turies the authority to which all historians have gone 
for the story of the beginnings of this famous State. 

Below the gilded dome lies Boston, big and busy. To 
the east sparkle the broad waters that gave the com- 
monwealth the foundation of prosperity in fisheries 
and commerce, and fastened upon that commonwealth 
its honored title of the Bay colony and the Bay State ; 
yonder the sandy Cape ** doubles its fist," so Dr. 
Holmes declared, "at all creation;" to the west. Grey- 
lock rears its four thousand feet in air, the clustering 
hill towns smiling at its feet; against the bold head- 
land of Cape Ann beats the unquiet sea; across the 
State, from north to south, doubles and twists the broad 
Connecticut; beyond rise the green and health-giving 
Berkshires; and from east to west, from north to south, 
pulses and throbs the life of the commonwealth, — four- 
teen counties, fourteen hundred cities, towns, and vil- 
lages, with full three millions of people, the freemen of 
Massachusetts. 



279 

And what a heritage is theirs. Not a large or overfer- 
tile land, as the show spots of the world are reckoned, 
— only eighty-three hundred square miles of country, 
rocky, hilly, and never phenomenally productive. But 
that small, rectangular, broken-coasted bit of the world's 
surface has produced men ; it has made history ; it has 
contributed more than its share to the intelHgence, the 
freedom, the progress, and the glory of the republic. 

'' I shall enter on no encomium on Massachusetts," 
said the Bay State's greatest orator. ** There she stands ! " 
And there she has stood for very nearly three centuries 
of unrest, endeavor, and achievement, needing no labored 
encomium, for she has spoken for herself. 

Three centuries of endeavor, — the seventeenth, eigh- 
teenth, and nineteenth in the Christian era! What is the 
record of the Old Bay State's accompHshments? 

In the seventeenth century : a new State founded 
in the wilderness, first steps toward self-government, 
town meetings organized, schools begun, manufactures 
started, fisheries made profitable, and, in spite of the 
stern grasp of a state church, an increasing, forward 
movement toward liberty that no repression could long 
smother and no persecution could stamp out. 

In the eighteenth century the record of achievement 
was even longer ; for in that historic hundred years Mas- 
sachusetts made her mark, and the world is not yet 
through talking about it. For desire blossomed into 
deeds in that century of effort and of slow but steady 
growth. Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, John and 
Samuel Adams, — these are a few of the famous names 
that appear upon the roll. That century saw, in Mas- 



28o 

sachusetts, the establishment of the whale fishery, the 
beginnings of America's merchant marine and the 
American navy ; it saw paper mills at Newton, cotton 
mills at Beverly and Worcester, nail factories at Ames- 
bury, — the real '' first start " of the Bay State's mighty 
industries. Shipbuilding, leather and shoe manufac- 
ture, glass-blowing and brickmaking, canal-building and 
iron-working, all took their start in Massachusetts in that 
century, which had, too, even grander things. It had 
the Old South Meetinghouse and Faneuil Hall, a cargo 
of troublesome tea, and the emphatic clanking of certain 
objectionable chains " on the plains of Boston," that 
were heard by Patrick Henry and George Washington 
in far-away Virginia. It had Concord and Lexington 
and Bunker Hill, the siege of Boston and the triumph 
of Dorchester Heights. It had the beginnings of Mas- 
sachusetts manufactures and Massachusetts reform, the 
protest against the Stamp Act, and the " shot heard 
round the world." A notable hundred years was that 
eighteenth century in the Old Bay State. 

And fully as notable has been, in the commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, the wonderful nineteenth century. 
Greatest of all its achievements, it seems to me, has 
been the share taken by the Bay State in that mighty 
victory of freedom which you may see fitly commemo- 
rated in granite, if you will take a car through the 
subway to Mount Auburn in Cambridge, and stand 
before Milmore's statue of the Sphinx, set upon the hill. 
For upon that impressive statue you may read these 
words: "American Union Preserved — African Slavery 
Destroyed — By the Uprising of a Great People, by the 



28l 

Blood of Fallen Heroes." To make that inscription 
possible, Massachusetts did her part ; and a leader's part 
it was. For Massachusetts stands for the long struggle 
for the equality of all men before the law which began 
at Plymouth in December, 1620, and closed at Appomat- 
tox in April, 1865. Massachusetts led that movement; 
Massachusetts fought ever in the van ; her banner cry for 
two hundred and seventy years has been, " Civil liberty 
and human rights! " and that banner cry is now high 
placed as the motto of the republic. It was uphill 
work to educate the people and accomplish this grand 
result; but to the men of Massachusetts, and to those of 
other States who worked with them shoulder to shoulder, 
the republic owes a mighty debt of gratitude. 

But progress comes only through opposition. Every 
step is a battle ; every advance is a victory. Even such 
world-wide blessings as the telegraph and the telephone 
— both of them Massachusetts discoveries— attained suc- 
cess only through struggle. So, in Massachusetts, as in 
every other State in the Union, progress, which has not 
yet reached perfection, can make its record only through 
blood and tears. Still will labor and capital wrestle for 
the mastery ; monopoly and manhood will have frequent 
tussles ; bigotry and toleration have not yet ceased from 
sparring; while that spurious American inconsistency, 
caste, will seek to root itself on democracy, and patri- 
otism and sectionalism will still war in the hearts of men. 
There is plenty of work laid out for twentieth-century 
hands to do, while it requires an alert and active brain 
to keep track of all the new inventions and all the ad- 
vances in helpful science and domestic problems that 



282 

are to be credited to the restless energy of the Bay 
State alone, — to say nothing of the rest of the world. 

Even as the nineteenth century closed, Massachusetts 
added her mite to the contribution paid by the republic 
of which she is a part in behalf of humanity and the 
freedom of man. In that latest struggle of progress 
with retrogression, the conflict of the United States with 
Spain, the part that Massachusetts took was no insig- 
nificant one. 

Opposed at first to a war which patience and deter- 
mination along peaceful hues might have prevented, 
when once the die was cast, the Bay State was in the 
van. Men and money were freely given ; relief and redress 
were willingly accorded ; and the men of Massachusetts 
on land and on sea, in the armies and navies of the re- 
public, made their mark as valiant fighters and as ready 
helpers. Captains from Massachusetts were with 
Dewey at Manila, with Sampson and Schley at Santi- 
ago. The plucky little made-over yacht Gloucester, in 
the action against Cervera's Spanish fleet, made famous 
once again the name of Massachusetts's chief fishing 
port. Four of Hobson's seven heroes were of Massa- 
chusetts blood, and a Massachusetts regiment was in the 
advance at Siboney and Santiago. In the halls of Con- 
gress, the representatives and senators of Massachusetts 
were first for justice and then for action, while at the 
head of the Navy Department, as its efficient, capable, 
and energetic secretary, was John D.Xong, ex-governor 
of Massachusetts. 

In all this Massachusetts has but lived up to her 
traditions and shown her old-time spirit,— that spirit 



283 

fitly described by Senator Hoar, the Bay State's hon- 
ored successor to Sumner in the highest legislative 
chamber of the republic. 

" Whatever Massachusetts has done," said Senator 
Hoar, " whatever she is doing, whatever she is to ac- 
complish hereafter, is largely owing to the fact that she 
has kept unbroken the electric current flowing from soul 
to soul, forever and forever, as it was generated, now 
nearly three hundred years ago, at Plymouth. Her 
generations have taken hold of hands. 

" The men of Plymouth Rock and of Salem, the men 
who cleared the forest, the heroes of the Indian and the 
old French wars, the men who imprisoned Andros, the 
men who fought the Revolution, the men who humbled 
the power of France at Louisburg and the power of 
Spain at Martinique and Havana, the men who won our 
independence and builded our Constitution, the sailors 
of the great sea fights of the War of 1812, the soldiers 
who saved the Union, and the men who went with Hob- 
son on the Merrimac or fought with Dewey at Manila or 
under Sampson or before the trenches at Santiago, have 
been of one temper from the beginning, — the old Mas- 
sachusetts spirit, which we hope may endure and abide 
until time shall be no more." 

That is a good sentiment with which to close these 
brief stories of the Bay State's beginnings, rise, and prog- 
ress. ** The past, at least, is secure." To-day, because 
of her energy and effort, Massachusetts stands among 
the States of the American Union first in educational and 
intellectual activity. She is first in fisheries, first in 
public libraries, second in banking facilities, and fourth 



284 

in manufactures, — not a bad showing for a State that is 
only fifth from the foot in size in the whole forty-five. 
She has a contented population of three millions of in- 
habitants ; she has two hundred millions of dollars in 
agricultural property, with dairy products exceeding 
sixteen millions in value ; ten millions are invested in 
fishing industries which return nearly six millions, of 
which nearly one and a half millions are brought by the 
historic cod; she has twenty-five thousand manufactur- 
ing industries; she has 'over six hundred millions of 
dollars invested as capital, and four hundred millions 
stored away in savings banks. The old-time energy 
finds ample channels for expression, and Massachusetts, 
the parent of many States, has still strength and vigor, 
brain and will, to keep her place in the van, even while 
merged into that larger community to whose glory and 
indivisibility none is more passionately loyal, — the 
United States of America. And so, with pride in her 
past, with hope for her future, let all true Americans 
join in the prayer with which the proclamation ends : 

"God save the commonwealth of Massachusetts! " 



Eclectic School Readings 



A carefully graded collection of fresh, interesting- and instructive 
supplementary readings for young children. The books are well and 
copiously illustrated by the best artists, and are handsomely bound in 
cloth. 



Folk-Story Series 

Lane's Stories for Children . 
Baldwin's Fairy Stories and Fables 
Baldwin's Old Greek Stories 

Famous Story Series 

' Baldwin's Fifty Famous Stories Retold 
Baldwin's Old Stories of the East 
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe 
Clarke's Arabian Nights 



.25 
.35 
.45 



.35 

.45 
.50 
.60 



Historical Story Series 

Eggleston's Stories of Great Americans 
Eggleston's Stories of American Life and Adventure 
Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies 
Guerber's Story of the English 
Guerber's Story of the Chosen People 
Guerber's Story of the Greeks 
Guerber's Story of the Romans . 

Classical Story Series 

Clarke's Story of Troy 
Clarke's Story of Aeneas 
Clarke's Story of Caesar 



.40 
50 
.65 
.65 
.60 
.60 
.60 



.60 

.45 
.45 



Natural History Series 

Needham's Outdoor Studies 

Kelly's Short Stories of Our Shy Neighbors 

Dana's Plants and Their Children 



.40 
.50 
.65 



Copies of any of these, books luill be sent prepaid to any address, on 
receipt of the price, by the Publishers : 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(15) 



School Histories of the United States 



Mc Master's School History of the United States 

By John Bach McMaster. Cloth, i2mo, 507 pages. 

With maps and illustrations . . . . . . $1.00 

Written expressly to meet the demand for a School History 
which should be fresh, vigorous, and interesting in style, accurate 
and impartial in statement, and strictly historical in treatment. 

Field's Grammar School History of the United States 

By L. A. Field. With maps and illustrations . . .1.00 

Barnes's Primary History of the United States 

For Primary Classes. Cloth, i2mo, 252 pages. With maps, 

illustrations, and a complete index ..... .60 

Barnes's Brief History of the United States 

Revised. Cloth, 8vo, 364 pages. Richly embellished with 

maps and illustrations . . . . . . . 1 .00 

Eclectic Primary History of the United States 

By Edward S. Ellis. A book for youngerclasses. Cloth, 

i2mo, 230 pages. Illustrated ..... .50 

Eclectic History of the United States 

By M. E. Thalheimer. Revised. Cloth, i2mo, 441 

pages. With maps and illustrations . . . . 1 .00 

Eggleston's First Book in American History 

By Edward Eggleston. Boards, i2mo, 203 pages. 

Beautifully illustrated 60 

Eggleston's History of the United States and Its People 
By Edward Eggleston. Cloth, 8vo, 416 pages. Fully 

illustrated with engravings, maps and colored plates . . 1.05 
Swinton's First Lessons in Our Country's History 

By William Swinton. Revised edition. Cloth, i2mo, 

208 pages. Illustrated ....... .48 

Swinton's School History of the United States 

Revised and enlarged. Cloth, i2mo, 383 pages. With new 
maps and illustrations 90 



White's Pupils' Outline Studies in the History of the 
United States 
By Francis H. White. For pupils' use in the application 
of laboratory and library methods to the study of United 
States History 30 



Copies of any of the above books will be sent, prepaid, to any address on 
receipt of the p7'ice by the Ptiblishers : 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK ♦ CINCINNATI ♦ CHICAGO 

(8) 



Carpenter's Geographical Readers 

By Frank G. Carpenter 

North America. Cloth, i2mo, 352 pages . . 60 cents 

Asia. Cloth, i2mo, 304 pages . . . .60 cents 

This series of Geographical Readers is intended to 
describe the several continents, — their countries and 
peoples, from the standpoint of travel and personal 
observation. 

They are not mere compilations from other books, or 
stories of imaginary travels, but are based on actual travel 
and personal observation. The author, who is an experi- 
enced traveler and writer, has given interesting and viva- 
cious descriptions of his recent extended journeys through 
each of the countries described, together with graphic 
pictures of their native peoples, just as they are found 
to-day in their homes and at their work. This has been 
done in such simple language and charming manner as to 
make each chapter as entertaining as a story. 

The books are well supplied with colored maps and 
illustrations, the latter mostly reproductions from original 
photographs taken by the author on the ground. They 
combine studies in geography with stories of travel and 
observation in a manner at once attractive and instructive. 
Their use in connection with the regular text-books on 
geography and history will impart a fresh and living 
interest to their lessons. 



Copies of Carpenter s Geographical Reader will be sent prepaid to any 
address^ on receipt of the price ^ by the Publishers : 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(47) 



The Natural Geographies 



Natural Elementary Geography 

Linen Binding, Quarto, 144 pages . . . Price, 60 cents 

Natural Advanced Geography 

Linen Binding, Large Quarto, 160 pages . . Price, $1 25 
By Jacques W. Redway, F.R.G.S., and Russell Hinman, Author 
of the Eclectic Physical Geography. 

The publication of The Natural Geographies marks a new era 
in the study and teaching of geography. Some of the distinctive features 
which characterize this new series are : 

1. A Natural Plan of Development, based on physical geography and 

leading in a natural manner to the study of historical, industrial, 
and commercial geography. 

2. Clear and distinct political maps showing correctly the comparative 

size of different countries, and physical maps showing relief by 
contour lines and different colors, as in the best government maps. 

3. Inductive and comparative treatment of subjects according to the 

most approved pedagogical principles, 

4. Frequent exercises and reviews leading to the correlation and 

comparison of the parts of the subject already studied. 

5. Topical outlines for the language work required by the Courses of 

Study of the best schools. 

6. Supplementary Exercises including laboratory work and references 

for collateral reading. 

7. Numerous original and appropriate pictures and graphic diagrams 

to illustrate the text. 

8. Clear explanations of each necessary term where it first occurs, and 

omission of formal definitions at the beginning of the book. 

9. Strict accordance, in method and treatment, with the recommenda- 

tions of the Committee of Fifteen. 



Illustrated Circulars describing the plan and method of 
the Natural Geographies will be sent free to any address on 
application. 

Copies of the Natural Geographies will be sent, prepaid^ to a?iy 
address on receipt of the price by the Publis hers : 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK • CINCINNATI • CHICAGO 

(4«) 



MAR 



■899 



